Jean Vilar Theatre

The project is a renovation of the existing Jean Vilar Theatre. It’s impossible to explain this project without mentioning a few words about the city where it is located. Louvain-la-Neuve is a fascinating post-modern university-town created in the 70’s, which was shaped from scratch on a large plot in the countryside some forty km south of Brussels. The new competition brief was requested more height above the stage, better technical equipment, and improved public visibility. Instead of developing a brand-new building identity, we chose to work with the original material of the city: bricks.

The city is constructed on a huge metastructure in the form of a concrete plinth. The building was designed by architect Jean Potvin. It was initially planned to host a university restaurant, but the programme was changed during construction, with the building being adapted to accommodate a theatre. The design proposal for the competition took advantage of the metastructure under the theatre to lower the performance stage by one floor level, cutting a 16×32m opening in the main floor slab on which the city is built. Because the existing roof structure was preserved, the theatre hall could be considerably increased in height without extending the building’s volume above ground. The underused technical spaces surrounding the new stage were activated as workshops, storage and dressing rooms, all directly accessible from the underground loading dock.

The existing roof structure was reinforced to be able to accommodate the new stage equipment. This was a challenge for the structural engineers and theatre consultants. Building a 3D model allowed them to calculate how and where to correctly reinforce the grid of the roof, since the pulleys, carriers and battens of the new rigging system would need to increase in number and weight, making them much heavier than before. For the transformation and extension of the theatre, instead of developing a brand-new identity that stands apart from the established city fabric, the architects chose to work with the material that was found everywhere in Louvain-la-Neuve: bricks. One type of red brick is used in different bonds throughout the façade, creating a composition of existing and new brick patterns on the straightforward, rectangular volume of the building. Like a palimpsest, the different layers added over time reveal and reinforce the story of both the city and the theatre.