Regeneratively-designed building will include interconnected and adaptable multi-use spaces to support creativity and embrace future change.
A building to foster groundbreaking performance, public gathering, teaching, and international research, the David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Creativity & Performance was designed by Haworth Tompkins (architect and design lead) and ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge (architect of record) in collaboration with theater and acoustic consultant Charcoalblue. Shawmut Design and Construction serves as the project’s construction manager. The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Creativity & Performance will contain interconnected, adaptable multi-use spaces designed to support creativity and embrace future change. The center will include two flexible performance venues—the West Stage, where large-scale productions will be produced, and the versatile and intimate East Stage—as well as light-filled, state-of-the-art rehearsal studios and teaching spaces, a spacious public lobby, and an outdoor performance yard to host ticketed and free programming. The center will also include dressing rooms, technical shops, and administrative offices for the organization, as well as a modest café.
The A.R.T.’s new home has been conceived and will be programmed to center community. It will be open to all during designated hours of operation, offering free Wi-Fi, food and beverage service, public restrooms, gathering spaces, indoor and outdoor public art and performance, and room rental opportunities. Designed with a blend of environmental and social strategies to minimize embodied and operational carbon, maximize wellbeing, boost biodiversity, and enhance resiliency, the David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Creativity & Performance embraces Harvard’s ambitious sustainability priorities. The building is designed to achieve the Living Building Challenge core accreditation from the International Living Future Institute in recognition that it gives more to its environment than it takes.
Conceived through core principles of openness, artistic flexibility, collaboration, sustainability, and regenerative design, it will be constructed with laminate mass timber, reclaimed brick, and cedar cladding to minimize its lifetime carbon budget. The building’s chilled water, hot water, and electric utilities will come from Harvard’s new lower-carbon District Energy Facility. It will capture additional clean energy from rooftop solar panels and leverage natural ventilation to reduce energy usage and enhance occupant comfort. Additionally, a green roof and extensive plantings will aid stormwater attenuation while increasing biodiversity and occupant wellbeing. Read more about this exciting project here.
St George's Guildhall King's Lynn (Grade I & II) has received planning and listed building consent with unanimous committee decision. Located on the banks of the River Great Ouse in King’s Lynn, the St. George’s Guildhall site is a unique heritage asset with enormous potential to become a major visitor attraction, a landmark performance venue and a vibrant hub for culture, creativity, and local enterprise. As the largest surviving medieval Guildhall in the UK, the refurbishment project will restore the historic and theatrical potency of this unique space.
The Guildhall is to be a thriving heritage attraction by day, supported by a new foyer with café bar, a riverside restaurant, enhanced back-of-house accommodation and a landscaped courtyard. By night, the venue will be an intimate and distinctive performance space hosting audiences of up to 300 people. Existing gallery space will be enhanced through fabric and servicing upgrades to increase its potential as a nationally recognised gallery. Across the remainder of the site, the project looks to return a series of warehouses into use, delivering a range of lettable spaces to help establish a flourishing community of local creatives. Air-source-heat pumps will replace gas boilers to provide low-carbon heating to virtually the entire site.
Haworth Tompkins is leading the design team with conservation support from Richard Griffiths Architects along with a team of specialists including Theatre & Acoustic Consultants - Charcoalblue, Structural Engineers – Momentum, Building Services Engineers - Max Fordham, Landscape Architect – JCLA, Access Consultants – HADA, Fire Engineer - The Fire Surgery, Catering Consultant – Mackintosh Solutions, Cost Consultant – Andrew Morton Associates, Project Manager – Pulse, Planning Consultant – Lichfields and Archaeologist – FAS Heritage. Construction work is planned to commence summer 2025.
HT Director Lucy Picardo is taking part in this year's Theatres Trust Conference at The Lowry in Manchester. The theme for the conference 'Making Theatres Thrive' looks to re-examine how theatres can reinforce their role in placemaking, contributing to vibrant and liveable communities and creating a resilient future for all. Lucy is participating in the Capital Lightning Round - 'Design for Resilience', and is presenting Hexagon studio theatre in Reading which revitalises the brutalist 1977 theatre with the creation of a flexible new hub for arts, performance and community uses. The extension and refurbishment will create a new 300-seat auditorium, a café, bar, rooftop terrace, and rehearsal and workshop rooms.
Industria Barking has won Commercial Project of the year at this year’s London Construction Awards with the judges commenting ‘the project is an innovative and elegant design solution and a very exciting use of industrial land, inherently sustainable with a powerful visual impact’.
The project was designed in collaboration with Ashton Smith Associates for client BeFirst and represents an innovative and ambitious approach to modern industrial design that densifies and diversifies workspace in a move away from the traditional typology of single-storey, low density ‘sheds’. Congratulations to everyone involved in the project. Read more here - https://www.haworthtompkins.com/work/barking-industria
Haworth Tompkins has completed the transformational redevelopment of The Warburg Institute in London, one of the world’s leading centres for the study of art and culture. Founded by Aby Warburg in Hamburg in 1900, the Warburg Institute has been part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London since 1944. Its open-stack Library, Photographic Collection and Archive serve as an engine for interdisciplinary research, postgraduate teaching and a prestigious events and publication programme. It is housed in a historic Charles Holden Building, as part of the University of London’s Bloomsbury campus.
The refurbishment project presented a unique opportunity for the re-birth of the Warburg Institute, to open its hidden collections up to new audiences and facilitate a more public-facing programme. The project brief was expanded beyond the repair of the long-neglected fabric and infrastructure, to include new and enhanced spaces, the Institute’s first public gallery, a dramatic 140-seat auditorium, improved teaching spaces and new storage and study areas for the Library, Archives and a state of the art centre for Special Collections. The unique Library Collection, the largest in the world focused on the afterlife of antiquity and the survival and transmission of culture, is housed over four stories preserving Aby Warburg’s original system of organisation with one floor each devoted to subjects of Image, Word, Orientation and Action. A reconfiguration to the layout of the shelving has expanded stack areas to make space for new acquisitions to the growing collection of 360,000 volumes, and it has opened up the library to natural light. Other enhancements throughout the building incorporate the refurbishment of the reception area, in which the newly restored Coade stone frieze of the nine muses of the arts and sciences is installed to welcome visitors upon entry.
“Through the Warburg Renaissance project we set out to honour the legacy of both its architect Charles Holden and founder Aby Warburg, while opening its unique contents up to new audiences. Striking a balance between modernisation of the Institute’s publicly accessible aspects, alongside the preservation of its extraordinary character and atmosphere has been a forensic and important process. Its architectural re-birth will allow continued discovery and enjoyment of the collections for many future generations.” Elizabeth Flower, Project Architect, Haworth Tompkins
On Thursday 12th September, HT Associate Director Hugo Braddick took part in an online webinar ‘designing sustainable, employee-centric warehouses’ alongside Holly Lewis, Co-founding partner, We Made That, Mike Teague, Head of Industrial & Logistics at Corstophine & Wright and others. The event was chaired by Architecture Today’s Jason Sayer.
They gathered to discuss a new demand in the market for commissioned work on light industrial spaces with new regulations around sustainability and wellbeing. Hugo presented our recently completed Industria project in Barking for client BeFirst, a multi-level industrial building designed to maximise efficiency, sustainability, and community integration.
The design helps connect workers with nature, a rarity in industrial settings, and contributes to the building’s sustainable credentials. Shared amenities, including a public café and business hub, foster a sense of community, while the upper floors offer breakout spaces for relaxation and socialisation. You can watch the full webinar here - https://architecturetoday.co.uk/at-webinar-designing-sustainable-employee-centric-warehouses-webinar-replay/
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has unanimously approved our 4.7 acre ultra-urban industrial and logistics scheme Bromley-by-Bow Industrial Park for client Fabrix. This transformational project will regenerate one of the most centrally-located, undeveloped large-scale Strategic Industrial Locations in London, providing 135,000 sq.ft. of best-in-class, future-proofed, sustainable industrial space, ideally positioned for access to the City, Canary Wharf and east London.
The vision was to set a new standard for how vital urban logistics can be sensitively integrated within the urban fabric and be a positive neighbour to both adjacent industrial estates and residential communities. We are looking forward to working with Fabrix and the team to deliver an exemplar innovative, industrial development.
On Saturday 7th September, HT Director Joanna Sutherland will be taking part in the 2024 Messums Architecture Symposium: Restore Not More - Reimagining Existing Buildings hosted by Messums West. Joanna will be speaking about our work at Pembroke College Cambridge.
Acknowledging the need to rethink our use of building materials in relationship to resources, this year’s annual architecture symposium will focus on the positive impact that rejuvenating, repurposing and refurbishing existing buildings has on both design and sustainability.
The symposium will explore the built environment through a series of talks and presentations by leading architects and innovators in the field including Mikhail Riches, Stanton Williams, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Witherford Watson Mann Architects, Feilden Fowles, Barnabas Calder and Chaplin Farrant. More info and tickets here - https://www.messums.org/exhibi...
Haworth Tompkins has recently completed an Archive for the London Borough of Lambeth with a strongroom providing over 2 miles of linear shelving for storing public records and new public facilities including an exhibition and education space.
The new space on Brixton Hill dynamically changes the accessibility and visibility of the borough’s public archive collections bringing the archives into Brixton’s growing cultural and knowledge hub alongside Black Cultural Archives, Brixton House, the Ritzy Cinema, and Brixton library. Find out more about the project here - https://www.haworthtompkins.com/work/lambeth-archives