Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Subscribe now to instantly view this image
Subscribe to the Architects’ Journal (AJ) for instant access to the AJ Buildings Library, an online database of nearly 2,000 exemplar buildings in photographs, plans, elevations and details.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
Philip Vile (website) Download Original
Additions at an open air theatre to create a new entrance and box office, add administration offices, upgrade workshops, refurbish the studio and replace a changing room block
The steeply-raked auditorium, which was designed by Howell, Killick Partridge & Amis in 1976, is one of London’s largest with a capacity of 1,240.
The box office, which will be open all year round, addresses the park and serves as the theatre’s public face. Inside the theatre the radial site perimeter, which follows the fan-geometry of the auditorium, has been lined with a new canvas seating canopy that complements the existing bar accommodation and provides intimate booth spaces.
Back-of-house facilities have been replaced by the large, linear, new backstage building, which is divided into two sections and houses offices, dressing rooms and wardrobe. It follows the geometry of Regent’s Park’s inner circle at the complex’s northern boundary, clad in rough-sawn larch boarding
The new buildings thread around existing structures and trees, form a series of linear elements culminating in the external public facade of natural and stained larch. Lightweight piles support a prefabricated, engineered timber structure that was erected on site in three weeks.
Data
- Begun: Sep 2011
- Completed: Apr 2012
- Floor area: 1,017m2
- Sector: Arts and culture
- Total cost: £2M
- Procurement: JCT Intermediate Building Contract with Contractors Design (ICD), 2005 Revision 2, 2009
- Address: Regent’s Park, London, United Kingdom
Professional Team
- Architect: Haworth Tompkins
- Client: Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
- Structural engineer: Price & Myers
- M&E consultant: Skelly & Couch
- Quantity surveyor: Bristow Johnson & Partners
- Landscape architect: Camlin Lonsdale
- Project manager: Bollingbrook
- CDM coordinator: Bollingbrook
- Approved building inspector : Assent
- Main contractor: Ashe
Suppliers
- Timber frame windows: Olsen UK
- Larch cladding: Capricorn Eco Timber
- Cross Laminated Timber: Eurban
- Glazing systems: Schuco
- Steelwork: County Construction
- Gold paint: Ardenbrite
- Aluminium framed doors: Benchmark
- Spruce plywood: AGB Narib