Returning of Battersea Arts Centre Organ marks the end of transformation by Haworth Tompkins
01/09/2019.
[LON] UK
metalocus, ANA DIOSDADO
metalocus, ANA DIOSDADO
Haworth Tompkins’ Director Steve Tompkins
Project description by Haworth Tompkins
Battersea Town Hall is a handsome, well-crafted civic building in south-west London, designed by E. W. Mountford in 1893. It is Grade II* listed both for its architectural significance and for its important political role in the birth of the suffragette and labour movements in the early twentieth century. Since 1974 it has been home to Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), regarded as one of the most important incubators of new performance work in the UK.
Since 2006 architects Haworth Tompkins have been working alongside the BAC team, the local community and theatre artists on a series of ongoing, experimental, phased projects that have gradually transformed the entire building into a vivid, adaptive performance environment and a welcoming centre of local community life. Working alongside artists, makers and performers, the task has been to imagine a 21st century public cultural building where the traditional demarcations of auditorium, foyer and back of house spaces can be dissolved and reconfigured in almost limitless combinations. Drawing on the existing richness of the building and preferred patterns of use by artists, the project began with a number of improvised, non-invasive alterations made alongside specific productions (such as Punchdrunk’s Masque of the Red Death in 2007-2008), to test strategies for change and to evolve a playful but rigorous design language.
Building works then progressed incrementally, beginning with alterations to the café and entrance foyer. To bring light deep into the building and to help orientation, a new public courtyard performance space has been created by selectively stripping back and patching a disused original light well in the centre of the building plan. New wall surfaces have been formed in glazed white brick, increasing the luminosity of the space and reflecting natural light into the flanking circulation corridors. Circulation routes have been reopened and improved, restoring legibility to the original Mountford plan and making manifest the subsequent evolution of the building fabric. Unused attics and rooftops have been converted and extended into offices, staff garden and bedrooms for visiting artists. Technical improvements such as dedicated workshop and dressing room spaces, together with a new ‘plug and play’ sound and lighting infrastructure, allow performances to take place in spaces all over the building and in any combination.
In the context of this incremental, narrative approach, the rebuilding of the Grand Hall after the shocking fire that partially destroyed it in 2015, was able to be assimilated into the project as another, albeit highly significant, moment of evolution and change. The structural brick shell that survived the fire has been stabilised and repaired to support reconstructed roofs, while the pattern of the original decorative fibrous plaster barrel vaulted ceiling, lost in the fire, has inspired a new plywood lattice ceiling which springs from the flanking walls and follows the same curvature as the original. New technical infrastructure concealed in the roofspace above the lattice ceiling allows natural ventilation, a far greater theatrical possibility and a variable acoustic to suit a range of events such as spoken word, drama, festivals, weddings, gigs and orchestral recitals. The surfaces of the walls of the hall and its surrounding corridors have been conserved ‘as-found’ in their extraordinary, almost Pompeiian post-fire richness and complexity, illuminated by pendant lamps designed by Haworth Tompkins and product designer Robert McIntyre.
The Grand Hall organ has been relocated to the balcony to enable more flexible use of the hall floor. Many of the original Robert Hope-Jones designed organ components were off-site being restored at the time of the fire and will be reinstated in a new, more deconstructed arrangement to showcase the inner mechanism. Demountable audience seating and promenade galleries connect to the balcony and can be configured to suit specific events. The Grand Hall Bar has been refurbished in collaboration with the artist Jake Tilson, who meticulously recorded the damaged fabric in the weeks following the fire and has made a vibrant back bar installation with some of the resulting images.
The Lower Hall area, below the Grand Hall, has been redesigned with BAC into a new creative co-working space called the Scratch Hub. This provides a home for local businesses, start-ups, artists, creative companies, charities and social enterprises. Externally, new signage beams have been surgically inserted into the façade to pin-point entrances to the building and hard landscaping modified to improve accessibility. Town Hall Road, running down the east elevation of the building, is being landscaped to create a shared territory with community garden planter beds and outdoor seating areas. This is due for completion in Spring 2019 and will complete the current cycle of creative capital transformations to the building.
Cumulatively, these transformations have resulted in the reconfiguration of the entire interior to allow the possibility of multiple, interconnected performance, heritage and community uses, equipping BAC for the next phase of its life as a resilient cultural building in a fast-changing world.
Steve Tompkins. Director. Steve studied architecture at the University of Bath and traveled long before joining Arup Associates in London. He was a founding member of Bennetts Associates in 1987 before forming Haworth Tompkins Architects with Graham Haworth in 1991.
With Graham, Steve is involved in the design of all the projects carried out by the firm and was director in charge of The Young Vic Theater, a new music campus for Aldeburgh Music, the Coin Street Center Quarter, National Study Theater and the Wall del Norte Performing Arts Center. He is currently working on major projects such as the National Theater, the Everyman and Playhouse theaters in Liverpool, the conversion of Battersea Arts Center and the Bush Theater, Chichester Festival Theater as well as a new social housing project in Pimlico for the Peabody Trust.
Steve has taught and lectured at several architectural schools in the United Kingdom and is currently Visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Greenwich, as well as guest critic at Cambridge and external examiner at Dundee. He has exhibited architectural work in the RIBA and RA, and landscape paintings in several galleries in the United Kingdom.
Toby Johnson. Managing Director. Director general. Toby studied architecture at the University of Cambridge. He worked with MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, where he was Managing Director for three years before joining Haworth Tompkins in 2005.
Prior to joining Haworth Tompkins, Toby coordinated projects such as the Phoenix Initiative for Coventry City Council, a major seven-year regeneration program that was nominated for the 2004 Stirling Award, the Dana Center, for the Science Museum, File Ruskin at the University of Lancaster and student facilities of the London School of Economics and Trinity College, Cambridge. Since joining Haworth Tompkins, Toby has played an important role in the Young Vic Theater Project, the National Theater Studio, the Coin Street Neighborhood Center and the Liverpool One Regeneration Project.
Toby is also responsible for the day-to-day management of the office and the supervision of project execution and contract administration. He has been involved with several professional organizations including being part of the design review panel of the London district of Southwark, and participating with the RIBA.
Act. > 2019