De la situación a la ciudad. El Teatro Móvil de Javier Navarro de Zuvillaga

Abstract

Architect Javier Navarro de Zuvillaga (1942) graduated in 1968 from the Technical School of Architecture in Madrid. In the academic year 1970-71, he travelled from Madrid to London to complete his training at School of Architecture of the Architectural Association. There, between September and June, he designed a project called Mobile Theatre. This building is a device composed of carefully designed trucks measuring 8 x 2.5 meters, which contain all the necessary elements to configure a space devoted to the performing arts or other collective uses. The building was covered with an inflatable roof-structure, with a total assemblage time of six and a half hours, for an estimated average of four operators. This project, shown and published internationally between 1971 and 1975, was never realized. In June, 1976, the project was completed with a brilliant and premonitory fifteen-page text called “The Disintegration of Theatrical Space”, published in the magazine of the Architectural Association, and an architectural adaptation made in 1974, which changed its original use of theatre to a new use of emergency housing. This valuable material remains partially unpublished and has not been the object of a detailed study despite its originality, rigor and cultural value.