The brief
The arts trust inherited a listed brickworks with no roof, failing walls and a strong local memory. They needed a hall for 400, six studios and a foyer that would stay open all day.
We kept every brick wall that could stand and placed the new hall inside the old kiln as a separate curved volume. The gap between old and new became the foyer.
We did not want to restore the brickworks. We wanted to give it a second working life.Tomas Reyes, project architect
Material and structure
The hall is white concrete with a fine sand finish. Light enters from a ring of roof openings and moves slowly around the curved wall during the day.
- 92 percent of the original brick retained
- Acoustic plaster tuned for both music and speech
- Natural ventilation through the old chimney
On site
The curved formwork was built in timber by a local joinery and reused three times. The building opened with a ceramics exhibition in its first autumn.
