EXTENDED CABIN

A metro carriage enters the stage. But it does not remain a carriage for long. Extended Cabin explores the moment when architecture moves beyond the role of backdrop and becomes a protagonist in its own right, transforming into an active element of the theatrical landscape. Set within the familiar geometry of a metro carriage, the project turns an everyday object into a mobile, reflective, and constantly evolving stage. 

The starting point is a section, not as a drawing, but as an action. 

A continuous longitudinal cut opens the body of the carriage, exposing its interior while extending its floor across the entire stage. The boundary between carriage and theatre gradually disappears. Inside becomes outside; the stage becomes the cabin; the architectural object expands beyond its own limits.

The section is no longer represented. It happens. 

Built from a steel framework and clad in polished stainless steel, the structure possesses an intentionally unstable presence. Its reflective surface captures the stage, the performers, and shifting light, producing constantly changing images that alter the perception of its volume. Architecture becomes image, reflection, and movement at once. 

Mounted on integrated wheels, the cabin can move freely across the stage. Its mobility is not merely functional; it becomes part of the choreography. The structure moves with the performers, around them, and at times against them, continuously redefining the spatial composition of the scene. 

At first, the cabin appears as a complete and autonomous architectural object. Then the performers begin to act upon it. 

They push it, pull it, and extend its structure, gradually revealing its capacity for transformation. What appeared solid becomes flexible; what seemed enclosed begins to open. The cabin expands across the stage, compressing and releasing space while continually redrawing the relationship between performers and spectators.

The set becomes a body in motion. 

Every transformation generates a new spatial condition. Every movement alters the architecture, while the architecture alters the choreography. The distinction between set and performer consequently becomes increasingly difficult to define. 

It is here that Extended Cabin proposes a different idea of scenography: not architecture as a container, but architecture as an action. 

The project does not simply attempt to reproduce the experience of a metro carriage. Instead, it takes the cabin as a spatial archetype—a place defined by movement, enclosure, and transit—and pushes these qualities beyond their conventional limits. 

The result is a choreography of opposites: inside and outside, stillness and movement, compression and expansion, permanence and instability. Nothing is fixed. The architecture is constantly on the verge of becoming something else. 

In Extended Cabin, the stage is not simply occupied by architecture. It is transformed by it. The cabin moves, reflects, opens, and expands, becoming both a scenographic object and a narrative device. 

Architecture does not frame the performance. Architecture performs. 

Credits:

Project Name: Extended Cabin  Scenography of Naria Theater  

Lead Architect: Kimia Sari  

Studio: 2X2 Art & Architecture Studio  

Location: Tehran, Iran  

Photographer: Masoud Bahmani  

Structural Engineer: Sanat Zarif  

Lighting: Sanat Zarif  

Client: Naria Entertainment