RIAI | Irish Architecture Awards

Citation

Architect’s Comments

The Unicorn Theatre was formally opened by Lord Attenborough on 1 December 2005. Located in Tooley Street near London Bridge and the River Thames, the Unicorn Theatre is part of the More London Development which is transforming this part of the Capital. The new Theatre is the result of a 5 year collaboration between the architect and the Unicorn Theatre and provides a 340 seat main theatre, 120 studio theatre, rehearsal studio, educational rooms, dressing rooms, offices and meeting rooms, grand foyer, box office, café and shop. Construction of the £1 3.5m building began in February 2004 and was completed in November 2005. In urban terms, the new Unicorn continues the varied scale of existing buildings along Tooley Street, with Foster and Partners much larger glazed office buildings as its backdrop. The new building is an asymmetric pavilion. Its elevations are open and transparent where they need to be, revealing the heart of the building to the public, yet elsewhere deliberately solid and cliff like, punctuated by carefully controlled window openings and toplight. This approach recognises a dynamic future as well as the architectural precedent of this part of London, the narrow streets and warehouses which once occupied the site, and nearby the great 1 9th century railway viaducts of London Bridge station.

The foyer is formed by a glazed transparent front along both Tooley Street and the serendipitiously named Unicorn Passage, the pedestrianised route to the River Thames. The foyer is multi-level and transparent, revealing both the Studio Theatre and the “Grand Stair”, which leads to the “Theatre in the Sky” (the main auditorium) which, clad in preoxidised copper panels, balances spectacularly above the Foyer and Unicorn Passage. The larger architectural gestures of spectacularly projecting main auditorium and the iconic corner tower with its eroded base, signal the new building at an urban level, yet the designs are rich in child scale detail. The stages, balconies, seating and in particular the form of the main auditorium itself derived from narrative story telling, all bring a delicate and appropriate scale to a unique new theatre for children! Eschewing bright coloured blobs and weird shapes more normally associated with buildings for young people, we have created a grown up building for children. The finished project exemplifies our design approach to the fusion of theatrical space, architecture and urban design.

Clients Comments

The Unicorn Theatre was founded in 1947 by Caryl Jenner where it began its theatrical life touring in two ex-MOD trucks. From 1967 it shared space at the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden before vacating in 1999 to begin realising Jenner’s dream of acquiring a permanent base of its own. The Unicorn Theatre employs professional actors performing to an audience of children families and schools and is the oldest established professional children’s theatre. In late 2000 the Unicorn launched a European architectural competition for a new building which was won by Many potential sites were explored before finally settling on its current location in Tooley Street (in the serendipitously named Unicorn Passage.) The new Unicorn is the first purpose built theatre for children in the UK. It contains a 340 seat main theatre, 120 seat studio theatre rehearsal spaces offices educational spaces dressing rooms and public areas. The finished building is the result of a 5 year collaboration between and our team at the Unicorn and the resultant design has produced an excellent new building for Artistic Director Tony Graham to continue his ground breaking theatrical work. The project is unique in that there are no condescending kindergarten colours or shapes instead it is a very grown up building to challenge young minds to expect more. In my view this is a quite exceptional work of architecture but from a pragmatic day to day functional perspective the project more than fulfils its brief. It has been warmly welcomed by everyone from excited critics and of course our staff.