Doug:

The Royal Court was the tightest theatre installation I have ever undertaken. The focus of the refurbishment in 2000 was clearly on the performance systems, and this meant that the heating and ventilation plant and equipment had to be secreted away in inaccessible corners of the building.

LGA:

Because above basement level, the building was very much ‘all-auditorium’, right?

Doug:

Absolutely – the auditorium fills virtually the full width of the building. So to route services to the new front-of-house areas – particularly to get ventilation and kitchen extraction to the new undercroft restaurant – we had to tunnel beneath the length of the building. I had to detail every plant room, every technical facility and every riser at 1:20 or even larger, in plan, section and wall elevations, in order to ensure that the services could be installed.

LGA:

And this is in 2000, relatively early days for CAD…

Doug:

Yes, I had to develop a three dimensional CAD model at a time before native 3D CAD even existed, In order to thread the ventilation ductwork through the convoluted voids above the auditorium ceiling, and between the raking structures of the balconies.

LGA:

We got to know the building pretty well too, and found that gaining a deep understanding of the theatre’s complex fabric and structure was key to the success of our design for the undercroft in 2014.

Back to 2000, and can you tell us the background to that original appointment?

Doug:

Well, The English Stage Company has long been known for radical contemporary theatre, but in the 1990s their Victorian playhouse was becoming tired and no longer met the company’s needs. The firm I worked for at the time, Max Fordham, was commissioned to design the building services for the major refurbishment project led by Haworth Tompkins Architects.

LGA:

Could you summarise what the 2000 project achieved for the theatre?

Doug:

The project remodelled the auditorium and upstairs studio theatre, found new spaces within the balcony structures and extended the building upwards, sideways and downwards to create new administration, production and front of house facilities including a bar and restaurant beneath Sloane Square. I also designed an external, wall climbing, folding platform lift that would allow props and scenery to be safely delivered into the upstairs studio theatre whilst still allowing trucks to access the delivery yard.

LGA:

Your brief included improving the sustainability of the building, which is listed – how did you address that challenge?

Doug:

Well the Grade II* listing restricted the interventions we could make to the building fabric, both internally and externally. However as the building was granted consent for extension and re-roofing, it did receive considerable upgrades to its standard of insulation. The building services solutions were developed specifically for each part of the building with simple natural ventilation and radiator heating for much of the back of house, mechanical ventilation with comfort cooling and heat recovery for the auditoria and public spaces and fan coil heating and cooling in the undercroft.

LGA:

Services technology has moved on considerably since 2000, so what were the main enhancements made in the renovation in 2014?

Doug:

In 2012 I was commissioned to undertake an energy audit of the building services to identify areas for improvement. The company was now operating a much larger building than before and, following the recession, running costs had come into sharp focus for many organisations, not just the English Stage Company. At this time the Arts Council was providing funding for projects that would help reduce operating costs for arts organisations. In the 17 years since the original design was drawn up, significant advances had been achieved in the control of systems and it seemed sensible to now apply these to the Royal Court. We took the opportunity to upgrade the boilers and chiller for much more efficient new modular units and to change the fans and pumps from fixed speed to variable speed. This allowed the volume of air or water being distributed around the building to be varied in response to the demands, with a significant reduction in motor energy consumption.

It did however require us getting access to some very inaccessible parts of the building to install new control valves on distribution pipework. Fortunately, having originally detailed every pipe route, I was able to trace these in the finished building 17 years on with relative ease. We also re-commissioned all the other systems and I was able to conduct smoke tests in the auditorium that demonstrated that the ventilation still maintained perfect balance across the space.

LGA:

Bravo, Doug.