Brighton College Performing Arts Centre / krft

+ 9

Description submitted by the project team. A new Performing Arts Center for Brighton College, with a fully equipped 400-seat theatre. The 3,000 square meter building incorporates study spaces, social spaces, classrooms and a multifunctional theater hall on a very compact site on the monumental neo-Gothic campus.

The commissioned size was quite large for its compactness, as it is sandwiched between the main building, designed by Gilbert Scott, and the new School of Sport and Science. By separating the building from the monumental buildings, new intimate outdoor spaces appear, but a very refined spatial puzzle is also required to make it fit.

This puzzle required some of the rooms to be moved out of the site footprint. The theatre foyer is therefore raised to open up the ground floor to the social spaces. The result is a dynamic, sculptural form, clad in the same material on all facades and roofs. The design of the curved brick and flint façade mediates between the monumental and the contemporary in a dynamic play of local and historic materials.

The underground studios, elevated theatre room and ground floor social spaces are connected to a three-dimensional public interior, with wide stairs leading up and down bathed in daylight. The theatre room is a compact, elegant and detailed wooden play box, with a daylight oculus that makes it a daily practice space.