RIBA awards for Storyhouse and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
04/06/18
The exterior of the Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios-designed Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (photo: Hufton + Crow).
Chester's Storyhouse and the new home of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire have been honoured at the RIBA Regional Awards 2018 - 'given to a UK building for its regional importance as a piece of architecture.'
One of six RIBA North West Award winners, Storyhouse is a converted and extended 1930's Odeon cinema providing 20 public spaces for storytelling including a new adaptable 500-800 seat theatre and a 150-seat studio venue. Inside the old cinema auditorium, the complex includes a new cinema screen, cafe and the city’s relocated library. We worked with long-time collaborators, Bennetts Architects, to design this significant new arts and theatre complex and the largest public building in Chester.
'The theatre design is a radical solution to the flexibility required by the organisation and their business model, namely to show both home-grown productions and larger touring shows. The theatre can morph from an 800-seat proscenium to a 500-seat thrust stage in an ingenious low-tech way,' RIBA said of the project.
The exterior of Storyhouse, designed by Bennetts Associates (photo: Peter Cook).
Foyer spaces at Storyhouse, designed by Bennetts Associates (photo: Peter Cook).
Storyhouse includes a new adaptable 500-800 seat theatre, able to transform itself from a summer festival stage into a winter touring proscenium house (photo: Peter Cook).
Inside the old cinema auditorium, the complex includes a new cinema screen, cafe and the city’s relocated library (photo: Peter Cook).
The building will serve the creative community of the area and beyond for decades to come (photo: Peter Cook).
The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios provides a new home for one of Europe's leading centres for musical education. Now the project has been awarded a RIBA West Midlands Award. The building includes a 500-seat concert hall which features a stage large enough to accommodate a symphony orchestra and replaces their old Adrian Boult Hall located in the city centre.
'The first purpose-built music college built in the UK since 1987, the new Conservatoire represented not only a rare opportunity to create a state-of-the-art facility fit for the digital era but also to anchor Birmingham City University’s expanding City Centre Campus with a building of civic stature,' wrote RIBA.
The exterior of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (photo: Hufton + Crow)
The front edge of the concert platform may be extended with demountable risers that are erected above the first row of auditorium seating. These are deployed when a very large orchestra is required (photo: Hufton + Crow).
The 146-seat recital hall has a retractable seating system allowing the space to be transformed to flat floor for exhibitions, ensemble rehearsals or other occasions where a large expanse of floor is required (photo: Hufton + Crow).
Both the 80-seat jazz studio and 100-seat black box experimental project space include motorised internally wired trusses to rig lighting and audiovisual equipment (photo: Hufton + Crow).
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