Kraftwerk Mitte Dresden, large hall. Photo: Ralf Buscher, Hamburg
Theatres as a spatial experience and a place to connect As an expert for cultural architecture and ‘chiming rooms’, the architect and university professor Jörg Friedrich founded his architectural office in Hamburg in 1986. Over time, opera houses and theatre projects have become one of the internationally renowned architect’s main focus points. Since 2000, Jörg Friedrich has developed his architectural theatre concepts with the pfp planungs gmbh, founded solely for that purpose. TEXT: JESSICA HOLZHAUSEN I PHOTOS: PFP ARCHITEKTEN
Today, the ‘pfp planungs gmbh’ is regarded as a brand for high-quality cultural architecture in all of Europe, with buildings and projects regularly receiving architecture prizes and awards. Together with his managing director Detlef Junkers, and the specialists for theatre architecture, Fritz Benter, Ulf Grosse, Christoff Oltmann, Götz Schneider and Ulf Sturm, as well as a fast growing team of experts, Jörg Friedrich develops all theatre projects 82 | Issue 84 | March 2020
with a keen eye for detail.“What unites us is our love for experiments and architecture. That excites us every time we create and build new, chiming architecture in the middle of a city,” says Jörg Friedrich on working in a large team of architects. A focus on multi-layered theatre experiences “Theatre buildings of the future are innovative public spaces where, next to the
staging of Shakespeare, Ligeti and Verdi, people can meet all day long to read, rehearse, exhibit, make music or study. Through its architecture, the theatre of the future can become the new cultural meeting point in the city centre or its periphery,”says professor Jörg Friedrich. That includes a varied utilisation plan that also reflects in its architecture: theatre, opera, concerts, experimental stage, library, film studio, music academy and acting school as well as public rehearsal spaces, rooms for practising, workshops and artists’ flats are united in a unique cultural project and are therefore publicly perceptible. “Architectural spaces have to be able to move people with their beauty and have to allow individual feelings at the same time, without dominating the visitor,” says