A century ago, there is a girl Shuling, now is called Sylvia.
To celebrate her long …long stay in New York, she decided to chose a "stage" challenge to be her last thesis project in school, " Experimental Art Theater".
Her concept is to invite the audience to experiment every sense of them. Her craziest idea is to open up backstage to the audience while they are watching the play, or mobile a frost screen behind the play to let the backstage shadow carry a puppet show like the interpreter. Of course, to professionals this stage is defiantly out of control.....not to mention that she might hide some infrared sensors on corridor to stop people while they're heading for the lounge bar, during intermission. They might accidently hear part of the voice record from rehearsal is broadcasting or some actors're murmuring. She explained this idea to her instructor who was laugh to death and shout loudly "Actors! Be serious ...". Luckily, though she is out of control, her craziness won her Honors in graduation.
Many, many years later, she is old and is planted like vegetable. One day she googled something and found her heart-throbbing back. That is a place called "Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision" design by the architects Neutelings Riedijk of Rotterdam. It is a stunning cubic wrapping in a luxurious skin of colorful cast-glass panels. Enter via an bridge that crosses over an underground atrium. A vast hall conceived on the scale of a plaza leads to a cafeteria .Through the spectral glow of the interior of the cast-glass skin in which depicts famous images of Dutch television composited by graphic designer Jaap Drupsteen. The glow evokes the stained-glass windows of medieval cathedral…
By imaging in a cathedral and chewing a burger in front of God. …or dinning in a play … Sylvia smiles all the way through the virtual tour, the humors is in the air, her heart is pounding for the " Deja Vu ".
Beside the murmurous old lady's day dreaming, the New York time well reviewed,
“It’s a stunning space whose power lies in the contrast between the various architectural experiences within. Clad in cold gray slate, for instance, the underground atrium is a striking counterpoint to the heavenly glass walls above. Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk call the atrium their “inferno.” It also evokes a tomb: big, square openings are cut through the atrium’s walls, revealing a series of corridors painted a hellish red. The archives are tucked behind these corridors, where researchers and scholars, you suppose, toil away with the concentration of monks.
Neither fiery nor blissful, the offices are something closer to purgatory. Arranged in neat little rows, they open onto long, narrow corridors that overlook the bustling main hall. The office interiors are more contemplative, the colored cast-glass panels alternating with more conventional strip windows. The colored glass emits a soft glow that is strangely soothing.”
Come and join the tour via Iwan Bann and Flickers.