"A good theatre is the connective tissue between the work it contains and the world in all its messy complexity."
Following Joshua Dach’s statement above, BLUEBARN theatre translates the upstart scrappiness and risk-taking ethos of its namesake theatre company into built form – the BLUEBARN is a theatre of the city. The theatre anchors a multi-part urban scheme which includes a mixed-use building (Boxcar 10) and a privately owned public park. The BLUEBARN is a hybrid proscenium, black box, and environmental theatre with a direct connection to an outdoor performance space. The building’s materiality is explicit and unexpected: burnished unit masonry, reclaimed wood, custom brick, weathering steel sheet metal cladding, and a custom fabricated exterior screen of welded rebar. Most interesting is the story of how this building came to be. In collaboration with the client, we commissioned artists Michael Morgan, Jim Woodfill, Daniel Toberer, and Chris Kemp to design and build integrated functional building elements. This book documents the unique collaboration between Actual Architecture Co., BLUEBARN Theatre, and four artists to create a new home for the Theatre. Purchase the book now from Actual FACT Books.
Table of Contents
09 Working with BLUEBARN
15 The Client
21 Project Approach
24 Flexibility without Neutrality
40 Sustainable Urban Community
48 Loose Design Team
58 Handmade Digital Architecture
67 Project Process
68 Project Funding
72 Project Delivery
78 Project Data and Credits
82 Awards and Publications
84 About Actual Architecture Co. & FACT
