The new theater, with an area of just over 10,000 m2, has become one of the largest in the entire Middle East and should turn Bahrain into a center for international cultural tourism.
Developing the project of the "cultural representation" of this smallest state in the Persian Gulf, the architects were guided by the rich heritage of Bahrain, as well as its specific landscape. The country is located on 33 islands where the terrain is flat, and the authors have given the building a shape that emphasizes this feature of the landscape.
The main volume of the theater is completely glazed and covered with a thin flat roof extending far beyond the halls and foyer. The seemingly ephemeral structure is emphasized by the very thin steel columns supporting the roof, and the braided ornament that adorns these wide stems gives it additional attractiveness.
The internal layout of the theater is based on the Arab traditions of designing residential and public buildings, the compositional center of which is always the courtyard. True, in the theater this role is played by the main foyer, in the middle of which the volume of the auditorium, designed for 1001 seats, grows. It is no coincidence that the number of seats for spectators was chosen this way - this is another reference to the heritage of Arab civilization, namely the famous cycle of fairy tales “1001 Nights”.
The second hall of the theater accommodates 150 spectators and can be used not only for staging performances, but also for holding conferences and all kinds of meetings.
