Pallet theatre

We were recently commissioned by Upstart, a not-for-profit voluntary arts collective, to design a temporary pallet theatre for their ambitious new ‘pop-up’ park at Dominick Street, Dublin. The pallet theatre’s brief was challenging – to design a temporary building (for the 5 week duration of the event) from materials that could be sourced for no cost, and built with inexperienced voluntary labour.

Due to the openness of the brown field site, the theatre structure needed to provide enclosure, to form a sense of intimacy. We quickly settled on packaging pallets for the structure, given their availability and the relative ease of building them to a significant height. The pallets were built in a circular arrangement, like a small classical amphitheatre, and the undulating wall swooped from a 5m+ wall as a backdrop to the stage, to a seat height limb that extended into the park, to welcome visitors into the space.

A temporary cantilevered roof was also built over the stage of the pallet theatre, and significant planting was added to the top and outside of the perimeter walls.

The project was masterplanned by A2 Architects, who co-designed the park.