Renovation of the Teatre Principal, Badalona
The building that houses the Badalona theatre, Teatre Principal, belongs to the Badalona Town Council. Built in 1930 for many years it was used as a cinema and was renovated, for the last time, in 1998. It is currently used for the programming of shows of varying formats, aimed at a range of different publics.
The initial idea of the project was to create a multipurpose space for drama productions and other events and to provide the building as a whole with a spatial quality and design continuity that it had lost over the years as a result of its various changes in usage, multiple modifications and a certain lack of upkeep.
The existing building has a dark and gloomy quality, with a layout that completely distorts the spaces. It is obsolete in regulatory terms and difficult to access, a factor that, despite the theatre’s important presence, has complicated its relations with the town. The purpose of our intervention was to transform the theatre into an open, light-filled space, which would be difficult to associate with the original building, despite maintaining the original shell. This is achieved by a series of significant structural interventions in the building, such as lowering the interior level of the foyer to street level, in this way avoiding the changes in level inside the building and in this way eliminate the resulting architectural barriers while increasing the size of the foyer through the introduction of a series of underpinnings that allow for a notable improvement to this space.
The foyer is the main area in which the spectators get ready to watch the show, where they meet, where they wait. This means that it a space that is dynamic and very much alive, although one in which the spectator still remains a passive subject. Our proposal was aimed at changing this situation, by granting the spectator a new status, that of an actor, even if only momentarily. This dynamic foyer, decorated with bright, reflecting claddings, focuses their attention onto the wall opposite the entrance where, through the location of a backlit image of the room from the stage, we momentarily convert the spectators into actors, just before they enter the main auditorium, providing them with an image of the stalls, not normally available to them, and in this way allowing them to become the theatre’s true protagonists.
In functional terms the renovation aims to create a building that is much more multi-purpose, suitable for a range of formats with technical guarantees that will make such possible, while also providing the greatest possible flexibility in terms of management, with the possibility of dividing it into two auditoriums, with space for 140 and 250 spectators, or a single auditorium with a capacity of almost 400. Another aspect that must be stressed is the installation of sliding seating in the stalls area, which allows for this space to be completely freed, enabling a wider variety of events to be accommodated and providing capacity of up to 1,000 people.
In terms of the façade, the intervention is very respectful of the original, maintaining its volumetry and solely intervening in the building’s skin, repairing and improving it through the use of stonework cladding at the level of the plinth, and stucco above it, placing particular stress on the entrance, in order to give it greater value and emphasise its singular character, in the midst of the urban fabric.
