In the Swiss canton of Graubünden, at an altitude of 2300 m, the Juliertheatre was opened: it is named after the Julier Pass, where, in fact, it is located. The author of the project was Giovanni Netzer, director of the Origen Festival Cultural since 2005. The festival is primarily dedicated to contemporary opera performances in the Romansh language, one of the four official languages of the Swiss Confederation. Experts from the engineering firm Walter Bieler and the construction company Uffer helped translate Netzer's plan into reality.
The opening of the space took place on July 31, and was attended by the Vice President of Switzerland
Alain Beers. The tower theater hosted performances of the opera Apocalypse in three languages by the Swiss composer John-Anthony Derungs, combined with two choreographic productions - Andrei Kaidanovsky for Sergei Polunin and Eno Pechi for three young dancers. The auditorium of the "red tower" is designed for 250 spectators.
The structure consists of 1220 elements, fixed by 24 thousand bolts, its weight reaches 410 tons. The building is able to cope with the challenges of the harsh mountain climate - wind gusts up to 240 km / h and snow falls. The tower took two and a half months to build. The project budget is about 2 million Swiss francs (1 million 750 thousand euros), in addition to this, it is planned to invest another 1 million francs (almost 880 thousand euros) in the construction to prepare the theater for the winter season. At the same time, its service life is limited: in 2020 the theater will move to another location.
The building is a symbol of the unity of nature and culture, the organizers of the festival explain. Standing out brightly against the background of the natural landscape, it nevertheless gravitates towards nature and enters into a dialogue with it. This is evidenced by wooden paneling with a natural texture, and the role of intermediaries between the theater space and the environment is played by large arched windows. Through them, sunlight enters the building and the mountain landscape is visible, which becomes part of the scenery. The formal analogy with the Tower of Babel (the Juliertheatre reaches 30 m in height) indicates the traditional diversity of languages for the region. The vertical orientation of the building expands the stage space in height.
This is not the first attempt in the history of modern architecture to create a capital wooden theater building, which is destined for further relocation. In 1979, Aldo Rossi invented the floating Theater of Peace for the 1980 Venice Biennale -
Teatro del Mondo. The structure on a steel frame, sheathed with wood, reached a height of 25 meters. Teatro del Mondo consisted of two volumes: a cuboid and an octagonal drum "standing" on it. The building was even nicknamed "the coffee pot" for its external resemblance to this vessel. During the exhibition, the theater moved along the canals of Venice, and after its completion - crossed the Adriatic Sea and "docked" in Dubrovnik. The building was dismantled in 1981, and in 2004 it was rebuilt in Genoa. It is impossible not to note a certain relationship between these two buildings - Venetian and Swiss.
