Haworth Tompkins clads The Old Vic extension in recycled spotlights
Architecture studio Haworth Tompkins has extended The Old Vic in London, giving the historic theatre a new home for its outreach programme that is fronted by a colourful facade of recycled spotlights.
Named Backstage, the 1,250-square-metre extension to the Grade II*-listed cultural landmark replaces a former restaurant on Waterloo Road with spaces dedicated to The Old Vic's work with local communities, schools and emerging creative practitioners.
On the opposite side of the site, Haworth Tompkins also upgraded the theatre's Webber Street stage door.
This has made it fully accessible for the first time in its 200-year history alongside the renewal of its dressing rooms, offices and toilets.
"The brief called for a colourful, welcoming home for creativity and community, and the result supports every part of the theatre’s life, from writing and rehearsal to education and outreach," Haworth Tompkins director Lucy Picardo told Dezeen.
"The Backstage building purposely does not try to replicate the adjacent Grade II*-listed Old Vic theatre, instead, the extension is a building with its own identity," she added.
Spread across six levels, including a basement, Backstage is centred around a triple-height cafe and bar framed in glued-laminated timber (glulam), which overlooks Waterloo Road through a fully-glazed facade.
While this glulam timber structure was newly constructed, the project predominantly took what Picardo calls a "fabric-first, sustainable approach", retaining existing walls and recycling materials from the former structure.
This included the facade's brise soleil, made using the recycled shutters or "barndoors" of theatre spotlights, which were repainted in shades of red, yellow, orange and purple to create a flower-like arrangement.
Surrounding the public cafe are learning and rehearsal spaces as well as a script library and writing room, and on the fourth floor, a multipurpose events space opens onto a small roof terrace.
The refurbished rehearsal studio, dressing rooms and offices within the existing theatre building sit alongside these spaces, with a ramp from the existing stage door between the two leading directly to Backstage's lift.
"The Old Vic’s existing historic rear stage wall is celebrated and left exposed as an internal found surface and it is where the main circulation routes connect between the old and new building," Picardo said.
Steve Tompkins and Graham Haworth founded their eponymous studio in 1991, and the studio frequently works on the renovation of historically significant cultural buildings.
Previous projects have included the restoration of London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the renovation of Denys Lasdun's brutalist National Theatre.
The photography is by Philip Vile.
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