David Brownlow Theatre

Project Info

Theatre Consultant: Charcoal blue

This sustainable theatre has been carefully crafted to sit harmoniously with the neighbouring buildings within the wooded campus setting.

Natural materials create a passively ventilated theatre designed to host school assemblies, recitals, and productions. The building is animated on all sides and transforms a once featureless carpark into a civic square. The CLT frame, which is clad with Viroc wood fibre panelling, was machine cut off-site and pieced together
by hand as a single piece of joinery. A low operational energy requirement was fundamental to the design. The project draws inspiration from Christine Boyer’s book The City of Collective Memory in its recognition that the theatre will be a stage set for everyday life. The design borrows historical motifs, including standing stalls of Tudor theatre, classical theatre proscenium and colonnade, and motifs from Renaissance ecclesiastical architecture. Inside, the
CLT frame is left exposed and lined with beech battens of varying depths to reference the articulation of the external façade.

The repetition of battens is more regimented at the base to emphasise the solidity of the structure, this is diffused as it ascends to create a sense of a firmament in the upper part of the theatre.