Diagrammatic Plan
TICK-TOCK
An immersive and rotating theatre
Spring 2023 @ Yale (Yale H.I. Feldman Prize Nomination)
Las Vegas, Nevada
The project addresses the future of entertainment architecture by combining the theatrical experience with physical transformations of spaces. People get entertained by being moved constantly between different atmospheres. Instead of having venues in a container, in the intervention, the architecture itself becomes an event. It immerses people with constant entertainment that they will never get bored of. Different scenes and settings of a story are presented in the form of multiple moving rides. It’s located at Las Vegas, where each component should not be seen separately, but should be interpreted in a moving sequence. It transforms the relationship between actor and audience from static to dynamic so that the audience is moved all the time within different scenes of one show.
Ground Level Plan: stages, scenes and plazas as themed park
Three Moving Rides
In traditional theatre, when it comes to the next scene, the other actors and stages become inactive. In this new intervention, each point-of-view character presents a unique voice and the design takes the idea of branching narratives. There are three rides led by three main characters, so the audience experiences the story by following different characters. Each ride has three stops referring to the typical 3-Act structure in the theatre, while each stage has a very distinctive and immersed physical environment. The movement of the rides resembles the mechanism of a watch where different components rotate around pivot points. All the seating not only rotates in a larger circular sequence but has a level of autonomy to revolve within its own circle, so the trip itself becomes a form of entertainment. There are moments where different rides meet each other and create larger audience volume. The total number of seats is about 600.
Atmospheric Section: Alice in Wonderland as a case study
The stages become public gardens when they are inactive, and “the interactive audience” are free to roam around on the ground level. When the seating moves to the top of the stage, the stage would be elevated to the second level to activate the show, where “the immersive audience” is getting immersive theatrical experiences.
The ground level is designed as a themed park that encloses the stages as the new public programs with hedges and trees serving as an urban forest. People who explore on their own on the ground level would be the interactive audience group that constantly and actively interacts with the physical settings, props and sometimes with actors. When the shows are inactive, people can still get an immersive experience, and the same physical setting can have different experiences on two levels. Intermediate spaces between tracks become the service buildings with egress and other service programs.
Two ways of rotation + sliding envelope
ACT I: Singing Flowers
ACT II: Tea Party
ACT III: Queen of Hearts