Eighteenth century Palladian and thoroughly 21st century hi-tech glass and Piveteaubois Douglas fir glulam might not sound particularly compatible architectural styles. But in the Bristol Old Vic theatre, they’ve proved to be a perfect match.
The £9.3m reinvention and refurbishment of the oldest continuously used theatre in the English-speaking world was not a job to be taken lightly. Consequently architects Haworth Tompkins engaged in a five-year process of “careful research, consultation, design and construction”.
The building had undergone numerous reconfigurations and rebuilds over its 253 year history, up until the 1970s. It sits next to the 18th century Coopers’ Hall, which it incorporated to use as foyer and service space, and the old façade of the theatre was replaced with brutalist brick, hiding the original auditorium space from the street.
The task for Haworth Tompkins was to open the interior of the original 1766 theatre to view, scars and all, revamp the link with the Coopers’ Hall, while at the same time creating an airy and welcoming new foyer and public space for use by the city’s wider community, not just theatre goers.
“The aim was to open up the front of house areas to a wider, more diverse audience and to place the theatre at the heart of Bristol’s public life,” said Haworth Tompkins.
The new foyer is designed as an “extension of the street”. It’s framed in structural Piveteaubois glulam, with the same material used for the roof, and the bold timber and glass façade brings daylight deep into the space.
The interior focus is the front of the original Georgian auditorium, made visible from the street for the first time. This is additionally illuminated by a large lightwell, while new openings have been formed, said Haworth Tompkins “to overwrite the visible evidence of historic alterations”.
The street façade is also itself intended to be “theatrical”, a “public work of art”, including sunshading shutters, which incorporate the text of the address given by renowned actor and impresario David Garrick at the theatre’s original opening, and a poem by Miles Chamber, who became the city’s first poet laureate in 2016. The concept, together with the juxtaposition of ultra-modern timber architecture and the Corinthian columns of the Coopers’ Hall, is to highlight the Old Vic’s long heritage and its role in the future life of Bristol.
Inside the foyer, timber staircases take visitors to viewing platforms above the main space, which is open all day as a café, bar and meeting place.
This inclusive approach echoes the view expressed by Garrick in his inaugural speech, that the theatre should be open to one and all – and has to pay its way.
“That all the world’s a stage, you can’t deny, And what’s our stage? – a shop – I’ll tell you why:- You are the customers, the tradesman, we; And well for us, you pay, before you fee; Should you stop payment, we are bankrupts made. To feast your minds and sooth each worldly care; Ye’ll largely traffick in Dramatic ware, When swells our shop, a warehouse to your eyes. And we, from small retailers, Merchants rise.”
The new foyer has also allowed the Coopers’ Hall to be redeveloped to accentuate the role of the whole complex as an open, public venue. A new studio theatre has been incorporated into the old barrel store at ground and basement levels, while the first floor has been restored to its original role as a grand meeting space, to act as an extension to the theatre foyer and a self-contained function room for other events.
To enhance the new building’s environmental performance, over and above using timber as the core structure, it is naturally ventilated with a large intake plenum and pre-cooling ‘labyrinth’ and low and high level openings, which are automatically operated by a thermostatic control system. The shutters can also be moved to “optimise summer shading and winter solar heating”.
According to Piveteaubois UK and Ireland sales manager Elisabeth Piveteau, the long and large span Douglas fir glulam columns, beams and rafters have helped create a very tall and open space. The strength of the prefabricated structure also enables connections with the fabric of the original building to be very light touch.
“It feels very light and airy and, at the same time, very contemporary. It really is a valuable and very accessible showcase for our products, demonstrating what can be done with Douglas fir,” said Ms Piveteau. “The timber, which is all PEFC-certified, has remarkable mechanical properties, with excellent durability and the exposed beams and structural elements in the foyer and auditorium area bring a really fresh feel to this historic theatre.”
In total, Piveteaubois supplied 59m3 of machined and cut-to-size GL24h Douglas fir glulam for the structure, including the roof beams. The timber will be allowed to darken and deepen in colour with age, and it’s complemented by a delicate oak lath screen along one side of the foyer, which will also be left to perform as nature intended, bending and flexing organically.
In an article for Structural Timber Magazine (STM), Haworth Tompkins said that the timber structure was “crucial to the concept” for the Old Vic.
“It echoes the original auditorium, which is a glorious painted timber structure within a masonry box, and the [new] structural timber was designed to drop into the geometries of the existing building framework,” said the practice.
“Douglas fir, flitched and with bolts expressed, was chosen as it has the warmth of softwood, with the fine grain and almost knotless quality of hardwood, which is exaggerated by the glulam process.”
In the roof, the STM article reported, only the largest spans required steel reinforcement in the form of T-flitches.
The roof beams were designed to span in one direction, with the short spans linked with ricon connectors, facilitating tight joints at any angle. The plywood roof deck provides horizontal bracing.
Each roof beam pairs with another at a column in a V-shape, with the columns comprising rectangular glulam sections either side of spacers or flitches. They also sit in steel shoes and timber members supporting the floors are ‘oversized’ to account for charring, while also “responding to the aesthetic of the foyer”.
“The expressed timber structure of the gallery against the Coopers’ Hall has a reassuring, almost medieval solidity,” said Haworth Tompkins.
The contract to supply the glulam came to Piveteaubois via its established relationship with contractor Constructional Timber.
“They always come to us when they need Douglas Fir glulam with sap for internal use and sap-free for external use,” said Ms Piveteau.
The company, she added, is confident of growing demand for structural glulam generally, and Douglas fir in particular, with an increasing number of projects acting as promotional platforms. And it is gearing up accordingly.
Piveteaubois’s current glulam production is 50,000m3 a year, with 40,000m3 from its Sainte Florence mill in France and 10,000m3 out of its Sylva plant in Poland.
As featured in TTJ’s recent French Focus (TTJ July), the company has also invested millions of euros in a CLT plant at its Sainte Florence site, and increased sawmill output to provide the necessary raw material.
The company’s CLT brand Hexapli is supplied in Douglas fir, spruce and pine and it reported in May that the new mill was already at 50% of its projected 50,000m3 a year capacity and climbing.
Piveteaubois anticipates increasing consumption in France, where engineered timber building is gathering momentum, in part thanks to the public-private partnership programme Adivbois, which is supporting construction of exemplar multi-storey timber-based residential projects across the country.
But the company is also targeting exports and sees the UK as a key market, with its capacity now to supply CLT and glulam as a package, adding to its appeal to specifiers. It has held discussions with a number of leading UK contractors, and its first CLT building in the country was delivered by G-Frame in July.
“It’s a relatively small project for an office extension in Maidenhead, all in residential, visual quality spruce, together with some machined glulam, but it’s strategically important for us; a trial from which we expect to secure larger developments,” said Ms Piveteau.
She added, that both Piveteaubois glulam and CLT are backed with its bespoke cut-to-size and machining service, where it has also increased its capabilities.
“We’ve invested in two new SCM Routech Oikos CNC machining centres, one for glulam, one for CLT,” she said.
Treatment options for glulam include Use Class 2 (UC2) as well as pre-pressure treated UC3.2 and UC4 glulam for exterior use, while Hexapli provides UC2 performance, with a water repellent treatment, a combination that won the company a 2019 UK Wood Protection Association innovation award (TTJ June). It also supplies Use Class 3.2 CLT in pine for exterior use and termite-infested areas.
Back in Bristol, the new Old Vic, which has won RIBA South West Building of the Year and National Awards, promises to provide Piveteaubois a very public stage on which to present its engineered timber performance.
“Our new space is above all a welcome to people,” said artistic director Tom Morris. “It’s an open invitation to explore.”
