Nuremberg State Theater, Germany, Perspectives

Designed the year German architect and planner Ludwig Hilberseimer began teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, this unrealized design shows the architect’s modern vision for a performance hall. Hilberseimer believed that modern archi- tecture, unlike the existing theater in Nuremberg (a heavy and ornate neoclassical structure), would be well-suited to address this program for a new era. His design included a large, flexible central area for performance with clerestory windows near the roofline and smaller spaces tailored for specific uses, which would accommodate the diverse needs of the state theater—a building used for plays, opera, and concerts—while allowing “rich shifts of cubic construction” to emerge from functional considerations.