Opera Village is the fruit of an exceptional collaboration between Kere, founder and principal architect of Kere Architecture, and the late Christoph Schlingensief, iconic theater and film director and key figure of the German cultural scene. Schlingensief was first drawn to the element of participation that underlies many of Kere Architecture's projects, a feature Schlingensief associates with Joseph Beuys's idea of social sculpture. The project lies at the crossroads of art and architecture, a powerful and Utopian concept built as a tangible manifestation -an opera house at the heart of a village. Rooted in Schlingensief's belief that performance takes place beyond the stage, the village becomes the backdrop against whicn the comedy and tragedy of daily life play out. Central to the concept of Opera Village is the idea of something perpetually unfinished and continually developing, a respect for the importance of slowness and an appreciation of the course of maturation. Compromise between the fluidity of art and the formal nature of architecture becomes evident. Although there is a project plan, it is evolving in stages, adapting to needs as it comes into being, with some elements perhaps never to be built. The design - as first imagined in 2009 by Kere and Schlingensief -consists of the main structure of the opera house surrounded by housing, workshops, ateliers, a school, and a health center. Since 2011, buildings have been constructed in stages, for and in collaboration with the surrounding community, using clay, wood, and laterite stone found on-site. The as-yet-unbuilt opera house at the center of the village has been envisioned as a spiral, its open-ended form symbolizing the freedom of possibility.
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