Theater Le Rideau de Bruxelles

Le Rideau de Bruxelles is a theatre secreted within a former coal depot in the centre of the Brussels borough of Elsene. It comprises a varied collection of buildings in the heart of the urban block and its only presence in the street-front is in the form of two almost adjoining houses. The one on the right leads the visitor straight to the core of the building: a square patio with glass walls around which the former jumble of constructions has been transformed into a clear and distinctive theatre. By way of the toilets, this outdoor room links the sequence of spaces used by the public: the entrance hall, the performance space itself, the bar and the passageway, which completes the circuit. At the centre of the floor plan, light reigns supreme. The stairs to the offices and dressing rooms conceal themselves in the shadows behind the toilets and between the backstage area and the bar. As a result, the principal architectural interventions that turned the existing situation into a coherent whole are either empty or hidden, but in any case they deflect attention.

This text is based on the essay of Petrus Kemme, which has been published in the Flanders Architectural Review N°14. When Attitudes Take Form