☉ New Lucerne Theatre is a fourth prize competition entry by COMAMALA ISMAIL for Projektierungsgesellschaft Neues Luzerner Theater in 2022. It is located in Lucerne Switzerland in an old town and riverside setting. Its scale is medium with a surface of 6.000 sqm a budget of 120.000.000 € and a ratio of 20.000 €/sqm. Key materials are glass and concrete. Filippo Bolognese collaborated as visualizer. Review the 2 proposals for the same competition.
Over the centuries, the urban space around the Jesuit Church and the Chapel Bridge has become a unique outdoor space with a strong identity for the entire city of Lucerne. This quality is underlined and expanded by the New Lucerne Theatre. A generous urban space surrounds the theatre and thus remains a public space that is appropriated by the people and filled with life.
The cultural life take place primarily at street level. The new freestanding structure redefines the outdoor spaces on all sides – permeable and with a strong identity. The proportions of the exterior spaces are in the right relationship to the existing volumes. The distances to the existing buildings are generous and adapted to the function.
The new building offers a unique opportunity to develop a functional project that responds to the existing dense structure and thus establishes a respectful dialogue between the buildings of the different eras. The existing historic buildings in the immediate vicinity are incorporated and continue to form a harmonious whole. The new theatre building is the natural development of a centuries process at this location. At the same time, this pattern goes beyond the urban dimension and refers to the archetypal typologies.
The inside interior space, especially on the ground floor, are directly related with the exterior space. The entrance hall is the extension of the exterior space, a large public space. The generous surroundings space a good urban embedding with the New Lucerne Theatre. Two new squares to the east and west continue the pattern of smaller squares that already characterises the historic city centre.
The precise positioning of the building ensures good visibility from all sides, especially from the two bridges and Bahnhofstrasse. The north-south orientation with the main entrance facing north towards the old town is a real entrance and corresponds to the pattern of previous important public buildings, namely the Jesuit Church, the railway station or the KKL.
The reference of the entrance to the water and to Bahnhofstrasse arises from a natural logic. The existing lines from the surroundings (façade of the Jesuit Church, Rathaussteg) are precisely taken up by the façades of the new building.