A renovation of a theatre and cinemas complex in Hertford by cultural sector experts Bennetts Associates has created a riverside hub with new openings both theatrically, and for the community. James Parker reports

Opening this summer, BEAM transforms Hertford’s existing but outdated theatre and cinema provision to provide what will be a major cultural hub in the area, but also an important focus for the local community both socially and practically. Bennetts Associates, which specialises in theatres and working with existing structures, won a competition run by East Hertfordshire District Council in 2019.

The firm’s 30+ years experience working in theatre projects, such as the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s refurbishment on the River Avon in Stratford and Storyhouse in Chester, stood it in good stead for tackling this project. The Hertford project was a far from straightforward expansion, sitting on a site in the heart of town that’s partly over the River Lea.

The new additions comprise five interconnected blocks on this very compact site, increasing the theatre capacity while adding three dedicated cinema screens and community functions for the client, but raising a host of challenges for the architects.Alastair Bogle, associate at Bennetts Associates, told me: “There’s a lot to fit in, it became apparent straight from the beginning that it’s more than just the theatre, it’s always been very much a community-based building.”

Partly due to the client being the council, and having a fundamental interest in the community involvement rather than just commercial positioning of the building, the supporting functions give this project a fairly distinct cultural mix. It was “much more than the Christmas shows and second release cinema” that the theatre ran, says Bogle. “That’s one of the things that we found most interesting about the project – being able to create that space for people.”

Following their appointment, the country “went straight into lockdown.” However, Bogle admits that “in some ways, it helped the project that the theatre was ‘going dark’ anyway.” But once the project was underway to transform the building, he says that the town’s expectations for its rejuvenated facility grew exponentially, with gatherings to enjoy culture having been prohibited across the UK.

Bogle says there were “a lot of interesting conversations with the client around whether people would want to come and gather anymore due to the rise in streaming platforms.” But he adds there has been a “real drive for people to get back together and experience things collectively, and I think that this building is going to be really important for that.”

The redevelopment of the theatre also “represents a significant and timely investment in the town centre of Hertford,” say the architects, forming part of the council’s “wider urban strategy to open up the riverside to the public.” The project has therefore been planned to include routes through for pedestrians, which further enhances its position as a social and community hub, not a cultural ‘ivory tower.’

The new internal programme provides a range of flexible event spaces plus three cinema screens, a new ‘studio’ auditorium for smaller live acts and performances, and an expanded main auditorium suited for larger productions, with an added balcony level. The building’s new foyer plus riverside cafe-bar helps connect the building with the river, and the old theatre auditorium with the new additions.

Brief & design approach

The commercial drivers largely centred around increasing the capacity of both cinema and theatre provision, and increasing the quality of what Hertford could stage as a ‘receiving house’ and provide first-run cinema releases. The existing 1970s auditorium had “very much a civic hall feel,” with around 400 retractable seats, and “lacked any sense of grandeur,” says Bogle. It also had a very small adjoining ‘black box’ studio. The only real connection to the river in the built form was a hireable function room “which hung over the river,” says Bogle, that wasn’t maximising the opportunity of the site.

The building had seen a light refurbishment in 2010, however this was focused on the front of house and some technical upgrades to accommodate ‘second release cinema.’ Already a venue punching above its weight before the interventions by Bennetts Associates, the expanded capacity – particularly that of the theatre – increases the venue’s reach on the national touring circuit, plus giving the potential to generate much more of its own work.

In the words of the project architect, the many stakeholders behind BEAM had “never had a building that matched the quality of what they do, and how much community work that they are involved in. The client was very, very adamant that we would make sure that this building is going to be for everyone, and everyone feels comfortable there.”

The former Hertford theatre building did not take advantage of the “amazing” riverside setting, says Bogle. A key goal of the project was therefore “to open up that piece of the site and re establish that connection, but also on a biodiversity level, and giving that to the public as well.”

The project takes the auditorium capacity from 400 to 550, which “moves you up a band” in terms of the potential touring productions which can be staged at the venue, says Bogle. In addition, there a studio theatre is in progress, with around 150 seats, which will be fitted out later this year as one of the final parts of the scheme. On the first floor of the block nearest the river there is a hireable dance studio with a sprung floor, and on the ground floor is a new function room (replacing the former ‘river room’) which can be hired for the various groups which are run at the venue.

The site is bounded by a road to the north, and the tree-lined river running north-south alongside the west flank. The plan extended a small amount into the park space next to the river on the south west edge, but generally it was kept within the confines of the existing footprint.

Bennetts employ a collaborative approach to tackling its often complex cultural sector projects, which often have the sensitivities of existing structures to contend with alongside delivering state of the art performance spaces. “It’s about establishing what the client really needs and being able to drill down to that really quickly,” explains Bogle.“I see architecture as a collective endeavour; I don’t see the point in not taking the people we’re working with on that journey.”

He adds: “What’s the point in spending five years with people that you don’t really want to spend time with? It’s a large chunk of your life!” Bogle believes that establishing client ‘buy in’ at the beginning of projects bears considerable fruit later on: “It just helps with lots of decisions, because sometimes we’re going to be challenging, and sometimes we’re going to be challenged, and you need to have that core relationship there.”

Despite the design post Stage 3 needing to be delivered “from people’s bedrooms” due to Covid restrictions in 2020, Bogle says the process was very straightforward, and the client “was very accommodating. He adds: “They gave us the space that we needed; they trusted us, when they needed to trust us.” There were cost increases on the project largely attributed to post-Covid inflation and global conflicts, and a value engineering process with contractor GPF Lewis, but Bogle is confident the design has not been compromised, though they “worked really hard with GPF Lewis to reduce costs on the building when necessary.”

A model of Hertford

The new building created is at once a unified design and a set of forms, with a “grain and a scale that works as a contemporary object that also works very much in this historic context.” Bogle explains that by wrapping a series of “boxes” around the existing theatre auditorium, and creating a central courtyard, “it sort of creates a mini version of the town itself, almost a contemporary reflection of the way Hertford is.” The client “bought into that as an idea,” he adds, and it “allowed them to be able to describe it to other key stakeholders when they took them around the building.”

The five blocks surrounding the tower are contiguous, in an overall composition that’s deliberately “pushed together, with a lot of time having been spent thinking about the overall ensemble” says Bogle. Cinema and theatregoers enter via an aperture under one of the blocks, which “feels very much like how you get into a medieval yard space in some ways. but in a contemporary manner.”

One of the designers’ challenges was that they “really wanted to pull those blocks back from the river edge to create space that you can walk along in front of the building.” However, the balance of the space required internally left “even less space to be able to do that; it took a lot of time, but it was worth the effort.”

The original ‘malthouse’ fly tower remains, an angular metal-clad structure which refers to the nearby medieval tower. It is still prominent but the theatre auditorium it sits on is largely obscured by the cluster of five new volumes. The main overall difference brought by the additions is that the formerly single-storey buildings around the theatre have been replaced by two-storey blocks, three of which contain the new cinemas on their CLT-framed first floors. Bogle believes that retaining the auditorium and fly tower was partly justified by it still functioning as “an interesting form in the town,” as well as from a sustainability standpoint.

When working with existing buildings, the architects profess an approach of “trying to keep as much as possible, which is obviously best for an embodied carbon, as well as a cost point of view and is a design challenge we enjoy.” This of course is balanced against the client’s requirements, and in this case the challenge of “how can we fit this stuff on the site?”

The existing buildings to the front of the site were not able to support the upper levels required, so they were removed including the front-of-house functions. Adding to these existing spaces “wouldn’t have worked, and they were a barrier.”

The three blocks on the ‘front’ of the site which contain the cinema spaces are adjacent to the street – which the river rushes underneath at the northern corner. On the western flank along the river, the two further blocks contain, respectively, the entrance foyer plus two new cafes and hireable function spaces, and finally the studio theatre, in the block next to a medieval motte, which is given a new connection to the building and town thanks to a riverside walkway to be completed at a later stage.

Part of opening the building and its enviable site up to the community is the way the windows to the cafe “directly address the river.“ The hired function spaces are also enhanced by river views, but anyone using the cafes also gets to benefit.

The connected brick-clad new buildings plus the existing theatre auditorium presents a unified form, but one whose facades are broken, to give a more approachable feel. “It couldn’t work as a singular monolithic thing in terms of a straight facade in that setting, it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Although the building has a new main entrance, unusually for theatres it “doesn’t really have an obvious back, and is more of a 360 degree building really,” says Bogle. This makes circulation and external access, as well as the aesthetic approach overall, more of a challenge.

Dealing with the river was not so much of a headache, given that the gradient dropped down “quite soon” after the curtilage. A bigger design challenge was posed by the sound of the fast-flowing river, with a large amount of focus being placed on the soundproofing of the auditorium and cinema spaces.

Exposing CLT’s potential

To benefit the building’s overall embodied carbon, the architects and engineers specified the new upper stories of the added buildings as CLT boxes. Bogle says he has enjoyed seeing these boxes go up on site, “as each houses a function – a cinema, a studio, a rehearsal room, so it’s very much like the brief manifested in individual buildings around the site.”

He says there are “myths around the use of CLT” which can be a challenge to counter, and fire safety requirements sometimes do mean “you do end up having to cover it up quite a lot, which is a real shame.” However, here he says “it’s been really nice to be able to keep it exposed where we can.”

He continues that the architects were particularly pleased with the “raw” CLT they achieved in the circulation corridors, “before you reach the ‘cinema world.’” This enables a rare change for the users to engage with and understand the upper storeys’ timber structure, with elsewhere the external brick language being brought into common areas internally.

In terms of the facades, the architects came up with a brick concept which subtly tied into historic buildings in Hertford, but also added a vibrant new identity using a protruding and glazed brick pattern. Bogle explains: “The context of Hertford is quite a lot of brick and glazed brick and tile, and we thought that would work really well for us.” They selected a brick from local manufacturer HD Matthews, working closely with them to “get the blend right” and produce a custom clear, crackled glaze.

The relief pattern of glazed bricks looks somewhat random and natural, but “actually took a long, long time to work out.” With the slight differences in shape which naturally occurs, the light reflects in a variable way across the faces, creating a shimmering effect, which is “a bit theatrical,” says Bogle.

A new identity

The considerable amount of CLT in the building is not the reasoning behind the name for the building being ‘BEAM’ (subtitled ‘Stage, Screen Social’), as Bogle explains. There was a lot of input from stakeholder groups as part of the extensive consultation, and there was consensus that the word ‘theatre’ should be avoided as the building is so much more than that. The consultation “just reinforced how important this building would be to the community and how much engagement people wanted to have with it.” It “allowed us that greater sense of how important the job that we were doing there was.”

He continues: “A core idea was that it is a building for everyone, and also a very different beast to what the old building is, so they wanted to feel like it was a rebirth of the whole thing.” The name refers to a beam of light, and “outreach into the community,” says Bogle, “but it can mean many different things that are obviously also theatrically based.”

Fitting several different functions onto a constrained site has not resulted in a set of cramped spaces, shares Bogle, he says: “We have used the site to its maximum, but from an internal organisational point of view, it feels both spacious and intimate.”

Internally, the blocks flow into each other, with clear visual connections but function as individual entities. “You can see you can always see two other spaces, and how they are layered – there’s a really rich flow, but at the same time everything does feel like its own area,” says Bogle. There are quieter spaces provided for those that need an escape, andeverything “connects back to the triangular courtyard.”

The original access for theatre deliveries was on the river side of the building – “the wrong side,” says Alastair. “So we flipped it to the yard side, and created a proper ‘get-in’ with dock leveller and a stage access with proper stage doors. “The triangular courtyard at the centre of the site serves the key purpose of soaking up the peaks of visitor circulation during performances.

The main theatre auditorium itself, which Bogle says previously felt like a “civic hall,” was stripped out internally – the ceiling was replaced, and the interior “reimagined to make it feel a much more intimate venue.” The new fixed seating and balcony gives it the “feel of a really serious theatre space.”

Conclusion

This being a publicly-funded council building meant that its budget was tightly controlled, and that’s one reason to celebrate how it has achieved a highly quality hybrid timber structure for this diverse range of functions.

This meticulously designed and important cultural project by Bennetts Associates has so far been a hit with both the client and the local community, for the way it helps to enhance the town and riverside.

Alastair Bogle concludes: “We’re just really excited to get the doors open and for the people to experience it. Ultimately, it’s their building, the aim was to give them a building that replicates the quality of the work that the venue does, and which serves the local community. We’re just really looking forward to people enjoying that.”