Projections

ELECTROMAGNETICS

A project that was supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Mag-Lev Theater was designed by Johansen in 1990. Utilizing the developing technology of electromagnetic levitation (“mag-lev”), each of Johansen’s designs has a specialized purpose:

• The Theater of Simultaniety, set on horizontal rails, uses linear induction motors to move performance platforms that feature theatrical events in the past, present, future.

• The Theater of the Divine Comedy (upper right) has platforms that move to accommodate dramatic “descents into hell and flights upward through purgatory... into the divine.”

• The Theater of the Eternal Return (lower right) is for “theatrical events that are philosphically circular in nature: cycles of life, reincarnation, the seasons, the passing of day.”

- from John Johansen’s book, Nanoarchitecture: A New Species of Architecture

“Architecture is not a finished piece from which the artist backs off and says 'ah, it's finished', but it's more than that - it becomes a building process. The original building of it is important and is expressed as part of the aesthetic. And then the very fact that you can have interchangeable parts means that it loses its set composition, it is no longer a composed thing and has a new power of organisation, which can change from season to season or climate to climate. ...and maybe you don't even recognise it when you come across it on another occasion. That's an idea that delights me. And that's a matter of improvisation, which brings the client into the picture as one of the members of the design team.”

- John M Johansen interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist

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