Recroom urban stagescape

This project explores a new design motif to create vibrant public open spaces in the city. It proposes the redesign of one urban plaza as a way to explore the idea of "stagescapes" as public places where visitors become both audience and performer, enhancing a city's social, recreational and cultural standing. Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theater (QET) complex and plaza was selected as a design site because it is the main civic performing arts facility for a dynamic, growing, multicultural urban region. With little connection between the inside architecture and outside plaza, a lack of visitor-friendly spaces and little attempt made to integrate the site with its surroundings, the area's potential is not being met. A growing downtown residential population highlights the need for an engaging space designed to attract and engage users both day and night. This situation presents an opportunity to reconsider the future design and program of the plaza as a stagescape. Analysis at the regional (Vancouver), local (Downtown) and site (QET complex) levels establishes the case for an urban stagescape at this location. The design itself is presented as a model which could be modified to fit local conditions elsewhere, providing at the least a case study of one proposal to enliven an urban space through performance art.