Shaftesbury Theatre’s stunning new design rewrites the rules about historic conservation

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Shaftesbury Theatre

Bennetts Associates

This stunning new fly tower rewrites the rules about historic conservation. The original theatre is an Edwardian baroque pile whose terracotta facades are brimming with carvings and ornamentation. A conventional response might have been to cast any new intervention as a restrained supporting act to the riotous melodrama already in place. But instead this design transfuses the energy of the original into an extraordinary serrated box that now crowns the building, its exterior clad in a rusty weathered steel to reference the terracotta below.

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PRP

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bere:architects

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Most music halls have now gone which is why those remaining, such as Wilton’s, are a precious link between the past and present. The architect recognises the weight of this responsibility by crafting an exceptional artistic and environmental response that not only restores the historic fabric to its magnificent original state but imbues it with an innovative array of sustainability features.

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