Immersive Theater – Industrial Heritage Regeneration Through Experimental Cultural Interventions

Authors’ Comment

If space becomes both actor and spectator, where does architecture end and theatre begin?
This was the initial question that triggered the desire to explore the connection between theatre and architecture. A deep passion for the performing arts was the key element that grounded this approach, understood as a complex means of exploring the profound emotional layers of the human being. The core concept crystallized around the intersection between the visitor's perception and the urban space, the site becoming a living entity that directly shapes the spectator’s perspective and emotions.
Taking as a starting point the opposition between the rigidity of the existing industrial structure and the proposed organic forms, the concept seeks to create a narrative architectural experience, in which each room becomes a distorted memory—a rupture in the perception of reality. Within this space, architecture provides a setting for the theatrical performance, while also becoming an active participant in the show itself, resulting in a deeply multi-sensory experience for each spectator.
Placing the theatre in a peripheral yet accessible industrial area allows the use of existing infrastructure, while simultaneously encouraging the emergence of new cultural hubs outside conventional circuits. In this context, architecture becomes a tool for urban regeneration and social cohesion, part of a broader urban planning initiative aimed at reintegrating peripheral areas into the dynamic of the city of Vilnius. The theatre, with its multi-sensory and participatory character, has the potential to catalyze the area into a new system of meanings, engaging both the memory of the place and the collective imagination.
The proposed ensemble functions similarly to a dramaturgical path, in which each territorial sequence is viewed as a state of mind, a distorted memory, and an emotional projection. To inhabit, to walk through, to experience a space also means to lose and to rediscover oneself. Does space take shape only when crossed by the human being? Or does it exist regardless, awaiting the meaning brought by human presence?

"Body, perception, space: The intersection between industrial heritage and sensory experience" is the key pairing that underpinned the development of the proposed architectural solution—a culmination of a multifaceted process involving research, experimentation, and refinement.
Based on this vision, an industrial warehouse in Vilnius, Lithuania, will be transformed into an immersive cultural environment. Access areas, performance halls, ramps, suspended galleries, and observation rooms are all arranged in a coherent spatial logic, while remaining sufficiently flexible to accommodate a wide variety of programmatic scenarios.
In architecture, as in life, what is not visible often holds the greatest weight.
Shadow has weight. Absence has form.
Through this thesis project, I have come closer to the belief that architecture can become a form of listening—not only to the site, the context, or the function, but also to the invisible things: the need for silence, for intimacy, for meaning.