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“Striking the stage” usually means to clear the set and props. Now it can mean taking down and moving the entire assembly. At the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, Wales, the Willow Theater—winner of the 2013 World Stage Design award design competition to house the People, Profit, Planet program that ran in September—featured a temporary and fully recyclable stage. The portable theater comprised locally sourced, reusable materials. Layers of hanging fabric form the building’s façade.
The space was a collaboration between Ohio State University theater professor Brad Steinmetz and theater designer Tim Lai—principal at Tim Lai ArchitecT, also of Columbus, Ohio.
The theater was constructed in the courtyard of the Anthony Hopkins Centre at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, and hosted performance pieces, exhibitions, seminars, and workshops, and featured seating for up to 150 guests.
The quadrennial World Stage Design explores sustainability in creative practice and includes a competition to design a temporal sustainable theater space. The event, held this year in Cardiff, also includes the world congress for the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians.
Interesting time-lapse of theater construction can be viewed here: