Espoo Cultural Center’s new theater hall

Espoo Theatre is the municipal theater of Finland’s second largest city, Espoo. It was established more than 30 years ago but has never had a building of its own. Currently, the theater performs on two stages in two different locations in Tapiola: one of these stages is a black box type theater hall within the Espoo Cultural Centre, called Louhi, and the other the Revontuli hall located in a former printing house a kilometer away.

After a lengthy wait, the situation is finally about to improve as the City has decided to build the theater dedicated facilities as an extension of the 1980s Cultural Centre designed by Arto Sipinen. Thanks to the new hall, the theater will be able to host larger audiences and broaden its repertoire, and the performers will finally have proper rehearsal space.

The new theater building is designed to be respectful of the cultural center’s architecture. It will connect to the existing building with the multifunctional ground level space acting as the theater’s foyer, as the connection to the cultural center’s foyer and also as an indoor pedestrian walkway from the northern parts of the neighborhood to its center. The theater hall will include flexible seating suitable for various types of stage arrangements, as well as state-of-the art acoustics and theater mechanics. The wall separating the hall from the foyer is openable to allow for even larger audiences, whereas the foyer itself will offer a spot for a restaurant currently missing from the cultural center, and it can also be used for pop-up performances.

The new building will add a missing piece to the white modernist architecture of the world-famous Tapiola garden city. Additionally, it will strengthen the collaboration between the city’s various cultural operators, all operating from the extended cultural complex from the completion of the theater onwards.