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Architects: MICA Architects
- Area: 96 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Andy Stagg
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Manufacturers: Evalon V de Alwitra, Harlequin Floors, Junckers, Oase Living Water , Plastestrip, Platipus Ground Anchors, Rootlok System, Zumtobel
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Lead Architects: James Kirk, Huseyin Bulbul
Text description provided by the architects. A small but carefully designed extension to an existing dance studio for the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, on the School’s Violet Needham Chapel site. The School occupies two sites in a listed building and a locally listed building facing each other across St Margaret’s Drive. The two sites were extended in the early 2000s to provide specialist dance studio accommodation.
Increasing space within the residential setting. The brief called to maximize the available space on the School’s sites to accommodate increased student numbers. The site is located in the St Margaret’s Estate Conservation Area and within the flood zone of the Thames. Detailed negotiation with the local authority indicated that capacity on the main site was at its limit, and a master plan for the school was developed to increase capacity across the small campus. The project makes the most of the landscape setting, providing a room in the garden, improving the relationship between the existing studio and the garden, and providing access deeper into the landscape with improved accessibility for all.
Collaboration, innovation, and implementation. Extending the architectural language of the existing Weston Studio which is itself an extension of the locally listed Violet Needham Chapel required an architecture that was sensitive to that of the buildings already on the site and the character of the residential areas surrounding the campus. Technical requirements demanded a similar construction approach, for acoustics in particular, and planning requirements required that elevations be constructed to complement the Weston Studio. A more sustainable approach however was desired, and so a timber structure was designed in collaboration with our engineers to extend that of the steel and concrete Weston.
A room in the garden. The new building steps carefully around the existing trees on the site, which characterize the conservation area. The curve of the building at the northeast steps away from the adjacent trees and provides a sheltered spot at the corner of the building and a prominent corner for the piano within the studio. The glazed façade to the north elevation improves the relationship between the studio, garden, and public realm, providing access deeper into the landscape. Where additional built form is visible from the road, this is offset by additional planting adjacent to the garden wall. With the reduced height of the extensions, the imposing chapel dominates the composition of buildings facing the street.
The dance studio provides enlarged space for dance teaching, and the palette of materials used is restrained. The main timber structural elements are visible within the interior space, mediating the interior-to-exterior view and controlling views to the outside, reducing overlooking to adjacent homes to the northeast of the site, and directing views directly towards the garden. The architecture interprets the varied architectural language of the site to ensure that what is effectively an "extension of an extension" does not contribute to a patchwork of architectural proposals but a coherent contemporary building extending the locally listed chapel.
The Weston Studio Extension is a contextual, contemporary jewel of a building, showing that even the smallest intervention can bring civic and specialist benefits to a complicated existing site.
