Text description provided by the architects. A new Performance Arts Centre for Brighton College, with a fully equipped 400-seat theatre. The 3000-square meter building incorporates studio spaces, social spaces, classrooms, and a multifunctional theatre hall on a very compact site on the monumental neogothic campus.
The size that was briefed by the College was quite large for the compact size, which is squeezed in between the listed Gilbert Scott-designed Main Building and the newly built School for Sports and Science. By setting the building apart from the monumental buildings, new intimate outdoor spaces appear, but it also requires a very refined spatial puzzle to make it fit.
This puzzle required some of the rooms to step out of the site footprint. Therefore, the theatre hall is raised to open up the ground floor for social spaces. This resulted in a dynamic, sculptural shape - almost like a ballerina - that is clad with the same material on all facades and roofs. The curved brick and flint facade design mediate between the monumental and the contemporary in a dynamic play of local and historical materials.
The underground studios, the raised theatre hall, and social spaces on the ground floor are all connected with a 3-dimensional public interior, with wide staircases going up and down, bathing in daylight. The theatre hall itself is a compact, smart, detailed, wooden playbox with a daylight oculus, making it useful as a daily practice space as well.
