HANDS ON ARCHITECTURE -6

SET DESIGN COURSE STRENGTHENS BOND BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARTS

"The architect must not only understand drawing, but music" -- Vitruvius

"Architecture is frozen music" -- Goethe

A special problems class titled Stage and Architecture, held in consultation with Frost School of Music professors Alan Johnson and Dean Southern, challenged eight students to explore various aspects of research and scenic design relating to a pair of one-act opera productions: Strawberry Fields and Ballymore, Part I: Winners.

Professor Jean-François Lejeune led the School of Architecture's collaboration in the project, which featured presentations given at various stages from which suggestions were made for further development.

"At the end of the course, Joseph Sheridan’s bold design was selected for the final production, beautifully realized by projection designer and artist Laurie Olinder," Lejeune wrote in a booklet about the operas that were staged on the Coral Gables campus. "Sheridan’s project is another demonstration that Alban Berg and Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s vision of integrating opera, photography and film has become a mainstream reality."

Sheridan, a fifth-year student at the University of Miami School of Architecture, explained " In spite of seemingly diametrically opposed settings and scripts— Central Park in Strawberry Fields and the hilly landscape overlooking the town of Ballymore, Ireland, in Ballymore, Part I: Winners — the notion of escapism is vital to both operas. The protagonists — the Old Lady; Joe and Meg — explore freedom through fantasy (consciously and unconsciously) and ultimately achieve it through death. Both operas eventually deal with a dream-like state as the line between fantasy and the real world erodes as the action progresses. As a result, the scenic concept distances itself from any real location."