Opera Bastille, Paris, 1983.

I intended to resolve in this project the following premises:

- To position the one million square-feet building on a site one-fifth of this area, and with irregular boundaries;

- To obey ordinances related to building-heights;

- To realize the myth: "Opera for the people" and to translate it to a functioning building.

The linear arrangement of the stages of the major auditorium with 2700 seats, the experimental theater with 1600 seats and the fully equipped rehearsal-hall with 100 seats made it possible to serve all of these units with a common back-stage zone. This in turn generated a computer-controlled and operated stage service system, where the middle element of the back stage works as a moving crane-elevator, servicing thus the stages from any of the subterrain storages. The - for economical reasons - oversized requirement, to run six operas simultaneously - demanded a non-traditional solution. To the contrary, concerning the rites of the arrival, I am very conservative, and view this process equivalently important to that of the performance - I even call it the "stage of the audience." Easier to say, then to preserve the graciousness of the arrival/exit of over four thousand people. For that reason - and to at least partially resolve the notion: "for the people", I've created a sunken plaza, where people converge, coming by car, with one of the three metro-lines, or walking. All arrive to a stair - which could serve as well an amphitheater and which leads to the entrance level. This plaza is open to everybody, is surrounded by restaurants, coffeehouses, and even gives a view to the foyer and of the illuminated Picasso painting hanging on the wall of it. The building containing the offices and dressing rooms is shaped-like all of the other parisian buildings - by the height-restrictions and the given angle of the roof. Its sides are part of two large spheres. Extended these latter in our imagination, one would enclose all the great buildings of the Old Paris, while the other contains the new ones.