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Caldicott Performing Arts |
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Caldicott Performing Arts Building, Berkshire |
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Caldicott's new Performing
Arts Building offers more than simply a resource to the School. It
reconnects the life of the school with the surrounding landscape providing
a backdrop not only for the day-to-day activities but also for special
performances. The new building, comprising the main hall, three classrooms, a meeting room and common room, is sited beside the original house. The key decision was to partially submerge the building to reduce its bulk, to maintain views and mitigate any loss of light to the surrounding buildings. The newly created quad, now at the heart of the school, provides views over the grounds through the predominantly glazed walls of the hall. In this way the school grounds become, through use of the quad, central to the everyday life of the school. Whilst the Performing Arts Building redefines the everyday life of the school it also transforms the occasion of performance. Visitors emerge from the old schoolhouse to experience their first view across the landscape whilst congregating in the quad. From here the visitor enters the tower, which forms the entrance to the hall, and drops into the hall itself. The scheme embodies three theatres: the quad (the civic place for street performance) the hall (the conventional model for theatre) and the landscape. The hall is composed of a series of structural brick fin walls, with a timber beam roof structure, copper roofing, aluminium & timber glazing systems and black-painted timber doors. The form and materials of the quad, tower and hall (brick, copper & timber), and the omnipresence of the landscape create a balance between an abstract and an English architecture. Buschow Henley worked in conjunction with structural engineer Techniker, environmental engineer Rybkonsult, acoustic consultant Sharps Redmore and cost consultant Stockdale. Caldicott has been published in the London Evening Standard, RIBA Journal and the inaugural issue of School Building magazine. The building was shortlisted for an RIBA Award. |
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