How to Design Temporality. Maurizio Sacripanti’s “Theatre in Motion” (1964–1965)

Maurizio Sacripanti (1916-1996) was a Roman architect whose work is still not widely known beyond the limits of architectural research. Very active in Postwar Italy, his visionary projects reached their peak when it came to theatres. In 1964-1965, Sacripanti took part in the competition to design the Cagliari Opera House, with a project called “Theatre in Motion”. In his proposal, Sacripanti suggested a theatre made of prismatic elements – shaping the stalls, stage and ceiling – which could be lifted and lowered through electroning programming, thus defining endless configurations of space, acoustics and lighting. Without numerical analysis but by means of in-depth historical research, including the acoustic report of the theatre, written by the engineer Libero Innamorati, this paper aims to analyse Sacripanti’s design method and its connections to the fields of acoustics and temporal design.