Theater Wolfsburg

Built from 1938 around a Volkswagen plant, Wolfsburg had factories long before it had a civic centre, and it then acquired that centre from architects of the first rank, Alvar Aalto among them. The theatre was Hans Scharoun's last building, opened in 1973, a year after his death: an asymmetrical, terraced interior in which foyer and auditorium are treated as one continuous landscape rather than as box and corridor. The house keeps no ensemble of its own, receiving guest companies, touring orchestras and dance, and it now carries its architect's name.