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
-
For Indian landscape architect Varna Shashidhar, nature taught her ‘more than any lecture ever could’Varna Shashidhar of Bangalore studio VSLA tells us of her journey to becoming a landscape architect, guided by observation, intuition, and a profound respect for place
-
Gangsters were cinema’s first immigrants but Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing forgets why'Caught Stealing' pays homage to the immigrant gangster genre but can’t compete with its greats
-
Make Dior Maison’s porcelainware yours with a new personalisation serviceChoose from a range of 35 colours to personalise Dior Maison’s legendary Limoges porcelain tableware
-
15 years of Assemble, the community-driven British architecture collectiveRich in information and visuals, 'Assemble: Building Collective' is a new book celebrating the Turner Prize-winning architecture collective, its community-driven hits and its challenges
-
Meet Studio Knight Stokoe, the landscape architects guided by ‘resilience, regeneration and empathy’Boutique and agile, Studio Knight Stokoe crafts elegant landscapes from its base in the southwest of England – including a revived brutalist garden
-
Tour this compact Kent coast jewel of a cabin with StudiomamaJack Mama and Nina Tolstrup take us on a tour of their latest project – a small but perfectly formed Kent coast cabin in Seasalter, UK
-
Boutique London rental development celebrates European courtyard livingLondon design and development studio Wendover unveils its newest residential project, 20 Newcourt Street, comprising nine apartments; we toured with co-founder Gabriel Chipperfield
-
A refreshed Fulham house balances its history with a series of 21st-century interventionsA Fulham house project by Bureau de Change creates a 21st-century domestic haven through a series of contemporary interventions and a deep connection to the property's historical fabric
-
The Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s favourite July housesFrom geometric Japanese cottages to restored modernist masterpieces, these are the best residential projects to have crossed the architecture desk this month
-
Visiting an experimental UK home: welcome to HousesteadThis experimental UK home, Housestead by Sanei + Hopkins, brings together architectural explorations and daily life in these architects’ own home
-
A house in Leamington Spa is a domestic oasis infused with contemporary sensibilitiesThis house in Leamington Spa, by John Pardey Architects, brings together flood risk considerations, a conservation area's historic character, and contemporary sensibilities
