area 109 | art and architecture

architect: George Tsypin

In theater there is nothing more powerful than the space. Today, when movies, television, computer – all flat projections on the screen – are dominating our visual world, theatre uniquely takes place in space. My early training as an architect remains a main impulse in my work. In the Moscow Institute of Architecture where I studied, some of the surviving members of Russian Avant-Garde were still teaching. Sometimes, some of the most famous names in the West were reduced to mixing clay at the sculpture department. Early in the 20th century, many architects of the Russian Avant-Garde designed for the stage. In fact, these were often the only “realized” constructions. They used the stage as a lab for new ideas. Their discoveries not only laid out foundation of modern scenography, but often inspired new architecture as well.
There is a connection that has been building for years between architecture and stage design. As architecture tends to be more ephemeral, temporary, and kinetic, it’s being pulled towards entertainment and advertisement. As buildings become more of an event rather then static monument, one day we’ll say a building was “directed” by an architect. Design for the stage has the tendency to use the outdoors with architectural scale, space and materials. Architects who are able to come up with the big theatrical metaphor usually win competitions.
Meanwhile, as Russian Constructivists early in the century used the stage as a lab for new architectural ideas, their descendents, Deconstructivists, such as Gehry, Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid are attracted by the mystery and spiritual dimension of designing for the stage. All are getting involved in major opera projects. In my work, I try to find the most powerful and complete expression of these two tendencies. In the design for the West Side Story in Bregenz as well as in the Ring in Amsterdam architecture and theatre in the process of destroying each other, give birth to ultimate stage architecture. I moved the orchestra out of the orchestra pit, and projected the set far into the backstage. Losing the pit as its anchor, the orchestra appears either onstage, or so far in the house that you can’t distinguish between musicians and the audience. Some of the audience find themselves floating above the stage, and with elements of the set in the middle of the house, backstage, crushing against the walls, piercing the ceiling and the floor. And the singers seem close, like a cinematic close-up, and then they reappear 100ft away, in a long shot. Your imagination takes you outside to the street, into the underworld, into space. The sets I design seem too big for the stage, they seem to burst through the walls. They are in constant clash with the architecture that is supposed to enclose them. They are in the process of destruction and rebuilding at the same time, as if the design itself is an attempt to break through into another world. The sets I design are anti-theatrical, inflexible, awkward. Architectural compositions often seem to be frozen in time. But a different kind of tension takes place. The tension of the space seems constant, unrelenting. It seems like the time stops and then you enter a different realm, horizontal movement of time. Narrative is no longer possible; one has to move vertically on the path of consciousness.
Vertical is the most important direction in opera. Vertical is spiritual. Van Gogh painted trees that were higher than the stars. He said that they communicated to him an ambition to reach: the cosmos. I was told that I am a wood element according to Chinese alchemy. Wood is flexible, but strong, and as a tree it grows, never stops expanding, mainly upwards.
It is a challenge in opera to take the action off the floor. Singers love the floor, they need the certainty of the floor to produce the sound. And yet when you manage to raise the chorus off the floor there is a soaring air-born effect. In theater you can defeat gravity. All energy goes upwards. Things fly. Very heavy things fly. In Russian icons, the saints look like people, however, they are surrounded by surreal, illogical architecture. Some thought that icon painters just didn’t know perspective or were naïve. But if you study these icons more closely you realize that they could not paint such an intricate architecture by accident. This shows the otherworldly character of what is going on. Once you abandon anything rational, illustrative, or literal, you begin to reach for spiritual dimension nonsensical space of space.
As you create a model, one has to let your intuition, your hands do the work. In Japanese military arts, the warriors abandon the rational mind and it allows them to anticipate the rival’s every move. That’s why when two masters are fighting, it becomes a ballet, theoretically without an end. Each one operates on pure intuition. Something similar happens as you let your hands sculpt the space in the model. For me, design is the search for that hidden formal mechanism, the sculptural melody of the space. I constantly have to do a parallel formal exploration in my sculptural work. The two – design and sculpture – feed on each other. Sculpture in a way is building a model without the constrains of real theatrical space; it’s trying to capture ‘other space’ that in theatre, is implied but often remains in your imagination. It is a search in terms of spatial solutions but also in terms of materials and the use of light and real objects. For me the model itself is a very autonomous work of art. It has to have integrity of its own. When building a sculpture or a model, I use glass, steel, wood and stones. My sculptures seem to be inhabited by invisible people or strange mythical creatures. But, they are not there: they’ll show up later... on stage. I want the audience to experience the vertigous sensation akin to traveling up the spiral tower. With its spiral shape thrusting upwards, piercing the sky, it must be a perfect vision of crystallized spirit. But its kinetic, powerful akin to bolt of lighting movement represents much more: the actual transformation of human consciousness.

George Tsypin is a sculptor, architect and designer of opera, film and video. He won an International Competition of ”New and Spontaneous Ideas for the Theater for Future Generations” some twenty years ago. Since then his opera designs have been seen all over the world, including Salzburg Festival, Opera de Bastille in Paris, Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Milan and Metropolitan Opera in New York. The first personal gallery show of his sculpture took place in 1991 at Twining Gallery in New York. George exhibited his work at Venice Biennale in 2002. He designed ”The Little Mermaid” on Broadway. His book ”George Tsypin Opera Factory: Building in the Black Void” was published by Princeton Architectural Press in October of 2005 (Golden Pen Award).