National Theatre Studio, Southwark, London



Architect
Lyons Israel Ellis, assistants John Miller and Christopher Dean;
Hajnal and Myers engineers.
Date Built
1957 - 58
Location
The Cut
Description
The Historic England website explains that this GradeII Listed building started life as a scenery workshop, wardrobe store and offices to the adjacent Old Vic Theatre and was called the Old Vic Annexe.  The building is now home to studios and offices for the Royal National Theatre.
 



They add that it has a, ".. Reinforced concrete frame, exposed internally and externally, boardmarked and with china clay aggregate, now painted, infilled with non load-bearing engineering brick and some foam slag blocks on ground floor. Board room overlooking Webber Street of monolithic reinforced concrete. Aluminium monopitch roof over main front range of building, rear roof flat and asphalt covered, inset with slanted rooflights which are a distinctive feature of this firm's work."
 


The building comprises two distinct halves,  "... physically expressed by recess on the Webber Street elevation. The front range, comprising ground floor offices, first-floor former wardrobe workshops and second floor former paint studio, is separated from the rear block, comprising double-height former scenery workshop, loading bay with boardroom, by a continuous 50' slot formed by setting the intermediate floors on cantilevers, which contains the vertically hoisted timber paint frame for scenery painting. The slot defines the both the building's external form and interior planning."











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