English National Ballet’s 70 dancers and 50 staff have relocated from a Victorian mews in Kensington to a £36m translucent box in east London.
The five-storey, 93,000 sq ft structure is one of a cluster of new blocks by Glenn Howells Architects. Together, they make up Hopewell Square, which sits on London City Island, a peninsula on the Thames reached via Ramboll’s red footbridge from Canning Town station.
GHA director Dan Mulligan says of the interior: ‘We wanted it to have the feel of a converted warehouse – lean, raw and industrialised.' Hence the liberal use of concrete. ‘We love the fact that concrete has tonnes of personality,' he adds. Meanwhile the translucency is achieved with big sheets of extra-white industrialised glass.
On the ground floor is a reception area and café, which is open to the public, and a production studio complete with fly tower and bleacher seating that packs away. Zigzagging up the building is a wide staircase of sheet metal with a timber floor and hand rail, and a strip of lighting running along underside.
Upstairs houses seven full-sized rehearsal rooms (with ceilings high enough to perform a lift), a room with rush matting on the floor where dancers do their stretching, a gym and costume workshop four times the size of the old one.
In ENB’s previous home, many of these facilities were either not fit for purpose or off-site. That includes the English National Ballet School, which has moved into the top two floors. Some of these spaces can be rented out to bring in extra income.
Mulligan and his team visited dance institutions around the world to glean ideas. Hence the pigeon holes in the studios where dancers can store belongings, and the internal windows which give the building’s users views into rehearsals.
The ENB, which marks its 70th anniversary this year, is not the only arts organisation on the peninsula. It will be joined by Nicholas Hare Architects’ new home for London Film School.
INFORMATION
-
Reach for the Barcelona skyline from this horizon-busting hotelHotel Arts Barcelona gets a luminous new look from New York studio Meyer Davis
-
‘We use the past to look forward to the future’: Oslo’s International Library of Fashion Research is entering its next eraFounder Elise By Olsen talks about the first five years of ILFR, nostalgia fever, and why public programming is the next step in preserving fashion history
-
Louis Kahn, the modernist architect and the man behind the mythWe chart the life and work of Louis Kahn, one of the 20th century’s most prominent modernists and a revered professional; yet his personal life meant he was also an architectural enigma
-
Welcome to The Gingerbread City – a baked metropolis exploring the idea of urban ‘play’The Museum of Architecture’s annual exhibition challenges professionals to construct an imaginary, interactive city entirely out of gingerbread
-
The Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s houses of the monthFrom Malibu beach pads to cosy cabins blanketed in snow, Wallpaper* has featured some incredible homes this month. We profile our favourites below
-
Meet Forefront, a cultural platform redefining the relationship between art and architectureForefront co-founder Dicle Guntas, managing director of developer HGG, tells us about the exciting new initiative and its debut exhibition, a show of lumino-kinetic sculptures in London
-
Corten curves and contemporary flair transform this terraced house in LondonCagni Williams Associates’ sensitive refurbishment of a south London Edwardian house features a striking and sustainable Corten steel extension
-
You may know it as ‘Dirty House’ – now, The Rogue Room brings 21st-century wellness to ShoreditchThe Rogue Room – set in the building formerly known as Dirty House by Sir David Adjaye, now reinvented by Studioshaw – bridges wellness and culture in London's Shoreditch
-
The architectural innovation hidden in plain sight at Frieze London 2025The 2025 Frieze entrance pavilions launch this week alongside the art fair, showcasing a brand-new, modular building system set to shake up the architecture of large-scale events
-
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner is ‘a radical reimagining of later living’Appleby Blue Almshouse wins the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025, crowning the social housing complex for over-65s by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the best building of the year
-
‘Belonging’ – the LFA 2026 theme is revealed, exploring how places can become personalThe idea of belonging and what it means in today’s world will be central at the London Festival of Architecture’s explorations, as the event’s 2026 theme has been announced today
