The Shed, 2013

This project is a temporary venue for the National Theatre on London’s South Bank, maintaining a third auditorium while the Cottesloe was closed for a year during the NT Future redevelopment. Designed and built in a year, the Shed is a collaborative process between the building designers, the National Theatre, and theatre-makers who will work in the space, in a way that more closely resembled a theatre show or an art installation than a conventional construction project. Its simple form houses a 225-seat thrust stage auditorium made of raw steel and stained plywood. The rough sawn timber cladding refers to the National Theatre’s iconic board-marked concrete, and the modelling of the auditorium and its corner ventilation towers complement the bold geometries of the National Theatre itself. The brilliant red colour covering the entire mass of a form without doors or windows, announces its arrival boldly against the geometric concrete forms of the NT, giving it a startling and enigmatic presence. Since its opening show in 2013, the Shed attracted a more diverse audience to the NT and helped to re-energise the entire site as the ‘NT Future’ project to regenerate the existing 1976 theatre building unfolds around it.

ADDRESS

SOUTH BANK, LONDON