21 Mar 2016
Wembley Theatre to create new model of immersive, ready-to-assemble cultural hubs
BY Kim Megson
The creative director of Flanagan Lawrence has told CLAD about the British studio’s design for a ready-to-assemble theatre, which can be used to quickly and efficiently build cultural hubs around the world for urban regeneration schemes.
According to Jason Flanagan, the theatre – which will initially be located close to London’s Wembley stadium – will be a “unique cultural venue” with a rotating central auditorium.
“It’s a fascinating, quite remarkable piece of design, with an amazing auditorium imagined by Dutch producer Robin de Levita,” Flanagan said. “You’ll have 1,300 people entering a circular drum on a slowly moving turntable, with the stages all around you. It’s the opposite of the theatre-in-the-round, and it allows the action to move across about a dozen quite massive stages, which are the size of film sets.”
Productions will fuse film and live action to immerse the audience from all angles.
The theatre’s other key innovation is its short life-span in any one location. The Wembley Theatre – which will be constructed later this year – has planning permission for a decade, after which the plan is to remove it and send it elsewhere.
“Wembley Theatre is really a temporary structure being built on the west side of Olympic Way on the foundations of the old Palace of Industry,” said Flanagan. “The building has been designed to have an intentionally quick construction programme that should allow the site to function as a cultural hub pretty quickly.”
The exterior of the 6,075sq m (65,400sq ft) building is formed of a plinth housing the foyer and supporting a large black box which contains the theatre itself.
According to a project statement released by the studio, “the design has its roots in late 20th Century temporary architecture, with a mandate that stretches beyond the physical constraints of ‘site’, and goes on to address social and political issues far beyond the typical bounds of architecture.”
The theatre, in its Wembley incarnation, is being developed for global production company Imagine Nation and will cost £10.7m (US$15.3m, €13.6m) to develop. Price & Myers is the structural engineer, Tower 8 is project manager and Vanguardia will consult on the theatre’s acoustics.
According to Flanagan Lawrence, the project will perform a key role in the development of an ongoing masterplan for “the emerging cityscape of Wembley.”
The studio is also renovating a 1970s Polish theatre as an “acoustically optimised outdoor performance space" with a curving roof canopy of inflatable panels.
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