A mobile opera house that can be pulled apart and fit into a shipping container was unveiled by the Bavarian State Opera. The €2.1 million Pavillion 21 - designed by architect Wolf Prix of the firm Coop Himmelb(l)au – seats 300 people and it will host its first performances during the Munich Opera Festival in the summer of 2010.
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was founded by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer in Vienna, Austria in 1968, and is active in architecture, urban planning, design, and art.
The Pavillon 21 building has perforated, sloping aluminium walls with a “crystalline outer skin” ; gleaming spikes on the outside the opera house were based on a computer space modelling of sound frequencies from Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze and Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni”, overlayed and parametrically transferred into the pyramidal forms.
The inside is similarly angular and includes a lobby and a large stage. The main auditorium is free of clutter to house experimental performances. It is being built in collapsible modules that can be dismantled and fit in a shipping container: the philosophy behind the portable building is staging travelling shows. It will then return “home” every summer for the festival, but the rest of the year it will travel the world and can be hired out to other opera and theatre companies.
