An modern timber theatre for a small college in Berkshire by Jonathan Tuckey Design can be transformational for the college and its pupils, writes Veronica Simpson
Phrases by Veronica Simpson
Jonathan Tuckey Design (JTD) has established a powerful monitor report for delicate interventions and extensions to current buildings – a ability that has by no means felt extra related or essential than in our present environmentally and economically-afflicted occasions. And that want to ameliorate or improve what’s already there nonetheless rings true for the apply’s first stand-alone, new-build construction: a phenomenal, bespoke theatre on the coronary heart of a college in Berkshire.
Horris Hill Faculty is tiny: simply 130 pupils, aged from 4 to 13. It’s a non-public preparatory boys college, for day pupils and boarders, set inside personal grounds with in depth parkland. Not like a few of its neighbouring personal faculties – Wellington School, for instance – it isn’t blessed with any spectacular architectural frontages. Nearly all of buildings are unremarkable, practical, low-level red-brick buildings accrued during the last 50 years, other than the shed-like sports activities corridor, which was added most just lately. So the gorgeous, purple, timber theatre that JTD has designed for the college is outstanding on many fronts.
Planted to the south of the campus, flanked by taking part in fields and wooded pastures on one aspect, however in any other case surrounded by the college’s combined bag of buildings, the brand new David Brownlow Theatre (named after its major benefactor) transforms what was beforehand a featureless automobile park, with added prefabs, right into a city sq..
The auditorium seats 160 individuals, with a stage shut sufficient to stay intimate for assemblies and performances. Picture Credit score:Jim Stephenson
Constituted of cross laminated timber (CLT), prefabricated in Austria, it’s clad in russet-toned wooden fibre panels – their hues fully sympathetic to the pure setting and the adjoining red-brick classroom blocks – to create a richer, extra three-dimensional look, and likewise enable for passive air flow through each mechanised and openable home windows. Erected in 4 days over the summer time holidays of 2020 by 4 carpenters, with the within additionally hand-built by the identical workforce, it’s no surprise the theatre appears like a chunk of finely crafted, bespoke, inhabitable furnishings.
The 160-seat auditorium and efficiency area is dominated by a big proscenium stage, sufficiently big to carry 120 pupils, however shut sufficient to the bench seating for headmaster Giles Tollit to really feel a simple reference to the viewers when giving assemblies, or when their roster of visiting audio system are onstage; curtains can collapse or increase the stage as required. Tuckey’s workforce labored carefully with theatre specialists Charcoalblue to get the appropriate configuration of stage and seating, together with a big technical balcony sufficiently big for educating small teams the way to use the A/V and lighting know-how.
The acoustics are glorious, due to a mix of deep blue undulating ceiling panels and gray acoustic wall panels. Little, if any, amplification can be required, making the area really feel much more pleasant and welcoming – two traits Tollit felt had been important to this area. There’s additionally a charmingly unfinished high quality to the inside, due to the untreated CLT body, which is left uncovered, and the sturdy benches (larch, CNC-cut to JTD’s designs and assembled on-site). It appears like a working, evolutionary constructing integral to the pupils’ progress. The massive timber body that fronts on to the ‘city sq.’ additionally has that attractive, unfinished high quality: a body over which to drape banners promoting particular person productions, or for use as a projection display screen or regardless of the pupil’s may want.
It’s immensely interesting – and uncommon – to take a seat in such an efficient, high-quality efficiency area and be capable of look out of the home windows, partaking with shifts in climate or seasons, or by the glazed aspect door on the lifetime of the college. These glimpses past the theatre seem to be a smart and benign technique to calm the distracted younger listener. And the pupils appear to have absorbed and adopted this new civic area, incorporating it into their day by day routines, gathering across the casual out of doors amphitheatre (a number of benches overlooking the fields to the south), or across the new city sq. at break occasions.
Making a theatre and efficiency area essentially the most architecturally vital construction on the campus is a gesture that can have robust sensible, academic and cultural ramifications. Tollit was satisfied {that a} correct efficiency area – quite than the sports activities corridor, the place assemblies and occasions had been beforehand held – could be massively useful to the pupils’ oratory expertise and, above all, their confidence. Nevertheless it was Tuckey’s understanding of the micro and macro contexts of the design that helped them to win the invited competitors in 2016.
The outside timber body, on which will be draped ads for productions or a white canvas for video projection. Picture Credit score:Jim Stephenson
It was a leap of religion for each events, nevertheless. As Tuckey says, ‘We had by no means performed something in schooling at the moment, and had by no means performed a theatre. We hadn’t performed a brand new constructing. However we thought, “Let’s have a go and see what we provide you with.” One thing about our proposal ignited their enthusiasm. We had this notion early on that it wasn’t simply going to be a theatre.’ He noticed the college as a city, and the theatre as its centre.
Tuckey – who studied social anthropology earlier than design – understood Tollit’s view of the function that the performing arts can play within the well being of a group. ‘He’s a former classics scholar,’ says Tuckey. ‘He felt that theatre has such an essential function within the lifetime of a group. Right here, you may act out all of the issues you aren’t permitted to do in public life – fall in love with the incorrect particular person, kill somebody to avenge your loved ones, and so on. In a pupil’s schooling that’s actually essential. Boarding college is such a closed group, so having that form of launch is actually essential.’
Tollit is clearly delighted with this new area and the way in which it displays the college’s values. ‘Drama and efficiency has all the time been a giant factor at Horris Hill,’ he says, ‘but there was nothing to display that dedication.’ However there are additionally rapid impacts on behaviour, ‘From my perspective, the way in which the boys are as an viewers has fully modified. Within the sports activities corridor they needed to sit on the ground, and located it exhausting to not be distracted. Right here, the main target and the standard of the interplay between them and our company has been good.’