Regeneration of Classical Stage: Reviving Palmerston North City Through a Traditional Opera House

Abstract

Abstract geometries emerging from the 21st century demonstrate a change in our understanding of great architecture. Nowadays, our cities host modern icons, which simply exist for themselves within a public space. Celebrity architects such as Foster, Gehry and Hadid, generate fame and tourist appeal with their designs, yet they are void of gravitas and humanism. The everyday performance of life has been excommunicated from important public buildings. Traditional principles of Classicism that guided design through to the Renaissance period have been abandoned in the new technologically-driven world. Drawing from the tenet’s of antiquity, there is an opportunity to reinstate civic architecture as the creation of a pleasurable journey, not just a destination. This thesis seeks to regenerate a disconnected city centre through the design of a traditional public building, the opera theatre, advocating architecture as the key to civic engagement. Theatre typology once enveloped the populace in the city, the theatre building itself structured by formal ordering and the performance of the audience. Palmerston North is inland and primarily defined by a centre point, The Square, which has been down-graded over time to a series of pedestrian shortcuts, cut off from its surroundings by a vehicular edge, rather than prevailing as a hub of public activity. The city’s only proscenium stage, the Regent on Broadway, is wedged within a desolate shopping street that was once the heart of the city that has been slowly abandoned, as the extension and renovation of the mall progressed. Originally a cinema, its design is inadequate for Palmerston North due to its inability to host large productions and attract public involvement. Through the design of a new theatre, Regeneration of Classical Stage develops a framework for the rejuvenation of a modern city with traditional methods, using canons derived from an analysis of Classical attributes. Public buildings formed out of historic notions enliven our cities, using places of performance as a stage for public life.