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Maintaining The Stock: Architecture and Planning 2

The document discusses the renovation of the Birmingham Hippodrome theatre in the UK. It describes how the renovation added new spaces like accommodation and a practice room for the Birmingham Royal Ballet. However, the architects question whether renovating the auditorium was the right approach, and discuss the possibility of replacing it in the future. They also provide an example of the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, which was designed as a modern building in the 1970s and has remained well-designed and flexible over time.

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65 views1 page

Maintaining The Stock: Architecture and Planning 2

The document discusses the renovation of the Birmingham Hippodrome theatre in the UK. It describes how the renovation added new spaces like accommodation and a practice room for the Birmingham Royal Ballet. However, the architects question whether renovating the auditorium was the right approach, and discuss the possibility of replacing it in the future. They also provide an example of the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, which was designed as a modern building in the 1970s and has remained well-designed and flexible over time.

Uploaded by

mohammed_fathelbab
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Maintaining the stock

Architecture and Planning 2

Birmingham Hippodrome after its rejuvenation.

Photos: Law and Dunbar-Naismith Photos: Martine Hamilton-Knight, courtesy Law & Dunbar-Naismith

And we added lots of space. There is a building called The Nightingale which adds new accommodation to support the theatre, rooms for Birmingham Royal Ballet to practise in, and a new second space a very simple but quite delightful room that Im sure will be hugely valued. And all of this is in support of the very difficult two-tier, 2,000-seat auditorium. The upper tier will always Dealingwitholdtheatresis have to remain a big tier. And one begins to wonder whether the brief for the notalwayseasyandheretwo refurbishment at the beginning was truly architectswithexperienceof convincing. The architecture certainly looks suchworkdescribehowthey than it did and it has a kind of better now robustness to it, but its not great by any goaboutit,andarejoinedby means. anexpertinsustainability. The fire curtain is a wonderful thing in its own right, incongruous in one way but perhaps stimulating because its incongruous in the context of this building. But at the end of all this process I began to ask myself whether the next phase of this Eden Court Theatre, development should be the replacement of Inverness, which the auditorium. Is that really how the logic of opened in 1976. this particular project works? Of course it wont be replaced, because we cant afford to do it. We did the refurbishment in the way we had to because the auditorium was there; all these things mitigate against that happening, but in an odd sense the thing that we thought, or were persuaded, was the key asset of this particular site has become its weakest link. Theres a remaining concern as to whether we can persuade people to Photo: Law and Dunbar-Naismith

face up to such a change as a potential outcome, and this has got to do with all these notions of sentimentality in the context of theatre. Not all of the countrys theatre stock is old. Eden Court, which was designed by my former partner, Graham Law, is a super building, again a touring theatre in terms of its design. The theatre is quite flexible and it actually makes a good conference centre, a really good piece of modern design, in my view, which works very well also in terms of foyer spaces. It was wonderfully conceived as a building, and recognises the truth of all theatre architecture in that its a place for something else to happen in, some other art form to happen in, and it has to make that work as best it can. For those reasons I would argue that this is an asset, something to be cared for, something to be cherished, maybe something to be listed, maybe something to be invested in further, in order to make sure that it continues to be used and succeed. I should say that Im a conservation architect and, in some ways, I shouldnt be saying the things that Im saying about valuing. Conservationists write conservation plans, and theres a hugely thick conservation plan about the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. Although the building is a cultural asset and full of significance in conservation terms, the conservation plan doesnt actually address the issue of whether the building is working well, and somehow or other this has the capacity to restrict ones thinking about how one might make the building work properly. One has to join a few more dots together when we come to assessing buildings of this kind. This is, for Edinburgh, a major cultural monument, and it really looks the THEATRE ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE 2002

AP 2-4

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