Theater of Refuge

The City of Ann Arbor has suffered a catastrophic flood. Climate change induced monsoonal rains overload the city storm drains and cause massive flooding that drains to the Huron river. As the water recedes it sweeps away large swaths of the city including most of the Power Center, a theater in the center of the city.

While this scenario is unlikely to happen to the location depicted even in the rapidly changing world today, the rebuilding of the Power Center after this fictional event illustrates the role our institutions may have to play in the future. The Theater of Refuge provides ideas about how our institutions that may have been built a hundred years ago as creative or entertainment outlets, can be built in the future to adapt to our survival needs as well.

The theater and the process of building the theater rely heavily on the events during and after Hurricane Katrina. The Superdome became the institution responsible for many people’s survival in spite of all its shortcomings. After the storm, in 2006 artist Paul Chan helped host a performance of Waiting for Gadot among the Lower 9th Ward and Gentilly, neighborhoods most affected by the storm. It used the area as backdrop and helped fund repairs. The Theater of Refuge would do the same. The former Power Center would be converted into one large back of house, and would simultaneously work with homeowners to build set and homes. In addition, flytowers would be constructed to provide a sense of safety and provide a place for performance above and away from the flooded areas.

The original Power Center was located on a site with a large grove of trees in front of it. The new fly towers are constructed in front of the building in this grove. The main structure and the seating of the original building remain and the new structure takes advantage of this. The latticework of the workshop incorporates underneath the structure and attaches to it and the living space for refugees is added atop it. Long ramps brings people to the top of the structure as well as the flytowers.

While the structure is meant to be a model for our institution like a theater to respond to any type of need a community might have (libraries have transitioned to this very well, moving from books to mediatheque to tool libraries), it also comments on climate change. The site was originally a coal supply yard for the power plant next door. The plant has since shifted away from coal, but in 2022, while most schools were pursuing carbon neutral energy mixes, added another gas turbine to its system.

Given that theater is performance, it felt appropriate to incorporate a bit of that into the final presentation. While speaking about the project’s workshop and the flytowers, a video played in the background showing the procession up the flytowers and the views that could be seen from them. The projector light passed through the detail model of the space above the workshop that provided sleeping and living space to refugees.