This project identifies the disused 1930s Orpheum Theatre as an extension of Gzira and of its people, existing outside of a strictly defined program or purpose. By investigating narrative as a tool for architecture, the project sought to explore how Orpheum can be revived by being set into transience. A transience promoting conservation not of material but of narrative, of the people’s connections with the space and each other. Orpheum is not frozen in time but it is allowed to ‘shift’ and recreate itself, creating traceable layers, to house the multiplicity of its soul – its people, so that they can relate to it, as it was and as it is now as a “snapshot of transition”.
