Royal National Theatre Studio

Heritage listing

Details 963/0/10168 THE CUT 20-MAR-06 83-101 Royal National Theatre Studio II Former theatre scenery workshops, wardrobe stores and offices to the Old Vic Theatre, originally called the Old Vic Annexe, now studios and offices to the Royal National Theatre. 1957-58 by Lyons Israel Ellis, assistants John Miller and Christopher Dean; Hajnal and Myers engineers. MATERIALS: 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. PLAN: 2 and 3 storeys high. Building comprises two distinct halves, physically expressed by recess on the Webber Street elevation. The front (N) 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. EXTERIOR: Long, canted front range of three storeys and basement, surmounted by tall projecting lift tower and boiler chimney to either end. Ground and first floor of 13 bays, the concrete grid inset with varnished Columbian pine window frames with strongly-expressed transoms. The same idiom is used in the full-height glazed stairwell, which breaks thr

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.