UNREAL, United Network of Rochester Experimental Art and Learning, is an adaptive reuse of the Bevier Memorial Building in Rochester, New York. It is a performing and visual arts school with a gallery and black box theater.  Maya-Lila is Indian philosophical concept of life where boundaries between real and unreal or true and false are continually shifting and wholly permeable. Maya-Lila, translated to illusory play, is also a concept in performance art, where the actor and the character become entwined, within the person and to the audience.  Informed by juxtaposition of design styles on the building’s façade, interior elements will interweave sleek modern design and Baroque design, which is so prevalent in theater design.  Organic and geometric, matte and reflective, transparent and opaque, and the separation of interior and exterior will all be manipulated to create an illusion of an in between time. These individual elements will permeate their perceived qualities with the others to create a space where boundaries between new and old are wholly permeable.

 

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