The Cut in Lambeth is the cheerful agglomeration of mixed urban stock in which the Young Vic has thrived as a
neighbourhood venue and as a nationally significant producing house for 35 years. Despite minimal comfort
levels and theoretically unworkable public facilities, the original building was both groundbreaking and immediately loved.
Redevelopment of a flexible theatre space
Waterloo, London |
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Bill Howell's ego-free working methodology, ad-hoc temporary aesthetic, use of the most basic
materials, wonderfully proportioned auditorium and pioneering recycling of an ordinary Victorian shop as the public
foyer became emblematic of the Young Vic's identity and values - demotic, light-footed and classless.
By the new millennium, an expanding artistic programme and terminally decaying fabric made comprehensive redevelopment
a necessity. The rebuild seeks to remain true to those values whilst radically expanding artistic capabilities and
reframing the work of the Young Vic for another generation of young audiences and artists.
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In doing so, the artistic team under director David Lan and architects Haworth Tompkins have tried
to address some of the recurring quandaries for theatre designers: the fact that many theatre artists feel alienated by
new theatre architecture, particularly when existing, well-loved buildings have been replaced; that theatre re-builds often
appear too resolved, too polished or too unyielding to adaptation by theatre makers. |
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What seems problematic to the architect can be treasured by designers, actors and directors; that
despite upgraded facilities, existing loyal audiences often feel over-managed or manipulated by new buildings in a way
that previous, less well-appointed theatres avoided; and that the tension between requirements for permanent civic presence
and more mutable theatricality can result in the sort of architectural identity crisis that prompted director Michael Eliot
to ask "isn't it time we stopped building for posterity?". |
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The design was developed organically over many months of presentation, discussion and improvisation with theatre artists,
local people and Young Vic staff. Transformation and provisionality, which proved to be central to those discussions, are
the key theatrical ideas on which the new design is founded. To respect the personality of the street and maintain a sense of
informality, the project has been conceived as a connected group of distinct elements, each with a specific materiality: the
totemic butcher's shop, locally significant as a wartime bomb survivor as well as the old foyer, has been salvaged, its familiar
tiling and signage unsentimentally patched; |
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the existing auditorium has been significantly adapted and re-skinned in a composite of unique,
hand-painted cement board panels (by artist collaborator Clem Crosby) and silver mesh held away from the painted surfaces
and uplit, so that the transformation between the understated, working daytime and celebratory night-time modes of the
theatre is made explicit and the one-off, live activity inside alluded to; the new large studio theatre is texturally related
to the auditorium by the use of a similarly scaled 'weave' of dark, profiled brick; |
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the support spaces and smaller studio are subsumed within an enveloping skin of concrete blockwork
that wraps the rear of the site and emerges onto the Cut as the scenery workshop; and the public foyer is expressed as
an informal, lightweight timber and steel structure that covers the resultant courtyard formed by the principal performance
studio and the butchers shop, both of whose exterior walls bracket the double height interior. |
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Materials throughout are basic and detailing informal and loose-fit, so that a provisional, low cost
aesthetic prevails and the theatre's technical production team can easily adapt the building in the future. Much of the
final fit-out has been carried out by the Young Vic to cement the process of ownership.
The building is planned to
allow many different patterns of use, overlapping public and private areas and enabling a number of different possibilities
for arrival, circulation and leave taking. The membrane between traditional front of house and back of house areas is as
permeable as possible so that the sense of a working, creative environment pervades the whole interior. |
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The original auditorium, though a great success, proved to have three drawbacks in use: no actors'
or audience get-round outside the auditorium, less than ideal working height and the lack of any recourse to another
theatrical world beyond the symmetrical performance space. The adapted auditorium retains much of the old fabric but
adds a new layer of get-round and entrances, raises the height with a new lighting grid and provides a moveable wall
and demountable gallery into the large new workshop so that an extended thrust stage can break the boundary of the square room.
The maximum seating capacity and number of configurations has been substantially increased within the same footprint. |
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Two adaptable performance and studio spaces, an enlarged foyer/cafe and more extensive working
spaces complete the current scheme, whilst a smaller, second phase to complete the site coverage (pending permissions
and funding) will provide additional storage space and more facilities for developing artists.
The build cost was just under £7m and the project opens on time and on budget.
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YOUNG VIC
Client: The Young Vic Theatre
Value £7,000,000
Completion 2006
RIBA National Award 2007
RIBA London Building of the Year 2007
USITT Merit Award 2007
Structural Steel Design Award Merit 2007
Leading European Architectural Forum (LEAF): Public Building of the Year 2007
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