Cultural gateway

Leading architecture practice Burwell Deakins Architects has completed a new £4.3m performing arts centre for Plymouth University, located on its city centre campus.

Gallery

The House’ accommodates a 300-capacity auditorium, a flexible ‘white-box’ theatre and music rehearsal rooms, within an area of 1540m². The centre also houses communal areas, which can be used for improvisation or informal performances.

Since 2006, Burwell Deakins Architects has worked with Plymouth University to create an integrated campus masterplan, in which The House plays an integral role. Aligned with the City Museum, the Central Library and the Roland Levinsky Building, The House strengthens the campus’s cultural axis and acts as a gateway to Plymouth’s nascent cultural quarter.

On the south facade, an 11 x 6.5 metre external screen is capable of transmitting live performances to the general public. The south facade is also detailed with large glazing panels and balconies, enhancing visibility between inhabitants and pedestrians on the street level.

Nicholas Burwell, Director at Burwell Deakins Architects, said: “We are excited to announce the completion of a new performing arts centre for Plymouth University. The House provides students with the opportunity to use fully-accessible, highly specialised theatrical facilities and offers a new creative hub for the performing arts department.”

The brief from Plymouth University required the building to cater for integrated disability performances, and so the facility is designed to be fully inclusive for performers, technical students and audiences. This includes the incorporation of a tension grid over the entire theatre space, allowing full disability accessibility to the lighting and sound equipment, multi-level access to theatre spaces and fully wheelchair accessible evacuation systems. The landscape has slow, integrated ramps that mitigate the effects of the sloping site.

The scheme uses a natural ventilation strategy and is designed with extended labyrinth intakes to minimise break in noise. This is used in combination with exposed pre-cast concrete soffits, phase-change materials and connections to the central CHP plant to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating for the building. The steel structure has a lightweight, highly insulated infill frame, helping to create a thermally stable environment.

Fact File

Client:

Plymouth University

Project Manager:

Turner & Townsend

Lead Architect:

Burwell Deakins Architects

Main Contractor:

Midas Construction

Structural Engineer:

Curtins Consulting

M&E Engineer:

Method Consulting LLP

Quantity Surveyor:

Gardiner & Theobald

Nicholas continues: “As well as providing new public spaces and routes through the university, our master-plan also identified the campus’s system of energy centres. From this, it became possible to integrate the building’s heating and hot water systems with an existing campus energy centre, which has a shared CHP providing low carbon heating and electricity to a range of buildings.

“We adopted a natural ventilation approach to providing fresh air and temperature moderation in order to achieve the University’s ambition of achieving a BREEAM Excellent rating and an Energy Performance Certificate rating of A. This low energy approach is incredibly difficult to implement in performing arts spaces due to the potential for break-in noise. However, 95% of the time the building is being used for rehearsal, rather than performance, and during these periods break-in noise has less of an impact.

“When the building needs to function as a performance space, the theatre space is pre-cooled before the audience arrive and then purged during intervals with some mechanical assistance.

“From the outset, our buildings are designed to ensure that orientation and thermal stability allow us to create naturally ventilated, low carbon buildings as a matter of course. It’s just what we do. The added ability to connect to the master plan’s energy centres only serves to improve the situation.”

In response to the surrounding urban environment, the building’s skin is made from standing seam copper, in dialogue with the adjacent Roland Levinsky building. The building is also clad in locally-sourced Plymouth limestone, a traditional building material in the city.

Adam Benjamin, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Plymouth University, said: “The House is probably the best middle scale dance venue in the country – the sort of provision I associate with Japan or France and really quite astonishing for a British university.”

Share this article

Login to post comments

About us

Future Constructor & Architect is a specification platform for architects and building contractors, which focuses on top-end domestic and commercial developments.

As well as timely industry comment and legislation updates, the magazine covers recent projects and reviews the latest sustainable building products on the market. Subscribe here.

Privacy policy

Latest updates

e-newsletter

Sign up below to receive monthly construction, architecture and product updates from FC&A via email: