Site: St Anna' s Church

Location: Zlata Street ( entrance from Liliova' Street) Prague's Old Town - foot of the Charles  Bridge

site location

exterior facade

Style: Gothic Architecture (Luxembourg period)             

Period: Built between 1313 - 1330


Ownership: Dominican Convent

Description: St. Anna's is an important landmark in the cultural heritage of Prague and is a protected building. It was originally built as a gothic church, and has since been adapted to other uses. It is now used as a cultural center in Prague, which is owned by The National Theater, and is operated under the title of 'Prague Crossroads' by The Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation VIZE 97, to promote the crossroads of different cultural influences, intersecting in Prague over the centuries.

Background: In 1782, St. Ann’s Church became one of many Catholic structures converted to secular use by the Emperor Joseph II as part of his reformation program. Over the last 200 years it was used as an industrial building that housed printing machinery and then as a warehouse. Three floors were installed within to tailor the church to its new function, blocking the vault from view, damaging murals, and disrupting the timber configuration from the 1730s. An unsound arch collapsed in the early 1880s and no reconstruction was attempted until 1989, when insensitive renovations removed pieces of the original Gothic truss.

Construction: Twice as high as it is broad and perfectly symmetrical, timber roofing, gothic truss system, brick gothic facade

Reconstruction: The church was transformed into a functioning community center, becoming a part of the Prague Crossroads Program to promote cultural dialogue. St. Ann’s is now the home of that organization and functions as a performance space. The 400 seated guests for concerts, lectures, and public forums can look up and see the original Gothic nave.However, the reconstruction of the Prague Crossroads is still ongoing. In recent years, for example, the restorers who were working on the renovation of the unique frescoes in the former church succeeded in finding unrivaled paintings from the 14th century of exceptional artistic quality and scope which are comparable to similar works at Karlštejn or in St. Vitus’ Cathedral. Its is now a unique cultural space that is created to provide a comfort comparable to other similarly oriented spaces. British architect of Czech origin, Eva Jiřičná, who is the author of the architectural solution, has played a significant part in this work. The place where an altar painting used to be now holds a work by the well-known Czech painter Adriena Šimotová entitled "Ecstatic Figure". Artists whose works also shaped the interior of the Prague Crossroads include Kurt Gebauer and Bořek Šípek.

gothic truss system

nave

Interior of Saint Anna's     

Gropius Total Theater Animation

Total Theater animation

Total Theater

Total Theater, 1927

In 1927, Gropius was asked by the director Erwin Piscator, one of the most radical protagonist of modern theater to join him in developing a new type of theater. Piscator was searching for possibilities of creating  a multi functional theater building, "a machine or an apparatus" in which every contemporary option for staging play, including the use of extensive multimedia strategies, would be available to him in realizing the his vision of theater political agitation

Concept Idea
" The contemporary theater architects should set himself the aim to create a great keyboard of light and space, so objective and adaptable in character it would respond to any imaginable vision of a stage director: flexible building, capable of transforming and refreshing the mind by its spatial impact alone"

 Gropius

The theater

• reject hierarchical seating of audience
• abolish the division between stage and stall
• action on the stage must be entirely participated in by the audience

Gropius looked into the idea of the "3 Basic Stage Form"

1. Central Arena - where the plays unfold itself 3-dimensionally while spectators folds around concentrically
2. Greek Proscenium Theater - protruding platforms around which the audience is seated in a concentric half circles. the play is set up against the fixed background
3. Present Theater - the play is pulled back altogether behind the curtain

For Gropius the strongest means of the theater was to make the spectator participate in the play.The issues he had with these stages was the spatial separation of the auditorium and the stage that had  failed to draw the spectators physically into the play.



Plan
The plan of the theater was based on an elliptical floor plan to which the rectangular stage building was attached horizontally. The elliptical auditorium with its escalating rows of seats was reflected in the external form of the building. It was covered by a dome like ceiling. The 2000 seats are disposed in a form of an amphitheater.

floor plan and section

This theater provides a stage in arena form, a proscenium and a back stage, that was divided into the 3 part of the basic stage form. by incorporating 2 rotary movements.

• 1st movement is on the circular stage turning on itself
• 2nd movement is  part of the auditorium that is also circular and included the stage itself. This is when the stage was no longer at the apex of the ellipse but almost in the center recreating the old form amphitheater  (arena stage)

By rotationg, switching and sinking the auditorium floor and stage, a total and spatially dramatic experience could be created, that would integrate the audience directly onto the stage. The intention was to suspend the boundaries between the stage and the space occupied by the audience.

deep stage

proscenium stage

arena stage

Scenes are projected on 12 screens placed between the 12 main column supporting the structure.This was intended to offer unlimited staging possibilities.The intermediate space between the auditorium and the outer skin, which was separated from the interior space by the systems of support (columns) was for access and passage way

sectional perspective showing the 12 columns

Gropius Design Philosophy

"The Modern society must entrust new task and new possibilities to the theater. It was must no longer be a mere sideshow to distract the lower classes from responsible activity. Still less was it for the kind of performance with an 18th century elite had envisaged when it built its theaters in hierarchical term (stalls, circles,boxes). On the contrary, the theater must revive sensibility, its must be an active spiritual force, with which man, worn by industrial labor, recharged his own vital processes; in the end, it was a much needed school for the mind. In other words, its was a theater for all, taking its form from all the interest and the center of which it stood, and becoming a complete theater"

Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius was a German architect and art educator who found the Bauhaus school of design, which became a dominant force in architecture and the applied arts in the 20th century. Gropius taught that all design should be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing.He created innovative designs that borrowed materials and methods of construction from modern technology. This advocacy of industrialized building carried with it a belief in team work and an acceptance of standardization and prefabrication. Using technology as a basis, he transformed building into a science of precise mathematical calculations.