Description:

The Rooted Theatre began with a single sweetgum ball. Its layered texture and quiet intricacy captured my attention. Not as an object to design from, but as a form to listen to. In my hand, it revealed itself slowly, a humble pod holding an entire world of patterns and possibilities. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” At that moment, I understood how something so small could inspire something expansive.
The pod became my metaphor for design - a celebration of the layered, the organic, and the unseen. Nature doesn’t dictate its forms; it reveals them, quietly. This philosophy shaped my process: to uncover rather than control, to let materials guide the narrative instead of imposing one upon them. As I rolled the sweetgum pod across clay, its texture transferred. Delicate, imperfect, and deeply tactile. This became the seed for the copper screen walls that now define Rooted Theatre’s identity. These aged, perforated panels are not just decorative - they hold the fingerprint of the pod’s surface, echoing nature’s detail and the gesture of touch.
The space is wrapped in layered materials like weathered copper, textured concrete, and timber. Each telling a story of time, erosion, and growth. At the heart of the building is the spiral staircase: a key spatial gesture that physically and symbolically draws you inward. From the foyer, you step into this circular structure that houses the accessible elevator, wrapping movement and inclusivity into a single sculptural form. The stairs don't simply connect levels - it invites you to descend from the lively foyer into the deeper, more intimate core of the theatre below.
It mirrors the journey into the sweetgum pod itself, a descent into complexity, depth, and discovery. As visitors move through warm, cocooned interiors shaped by organic curves and filtered light, they experience a space that feels rooted, responsive, and alive. Just like the pod that inspired it, Rooted Theatre invites you to lean in, to feel, and to find the complexity waiting quietly beneath the surface.