Curve theatre

Location: Leicester, UK
Scope: Performing arts centre
Area: 12,900sqm
Completed: 2009
Budget: £61 million
Client: Leicester City Council / Haymarket Theatre
Architect: Rafael Viñoly Architects
Structural Engineer: Adams Kara Taylor
Services Engineer: Arup
Project Manager: Focus Consultants
Quantity Surveyor: Turner & Townsend
Theatre Consultant: Ducks Sceno / Charcoal Blue
Acoustic Consultant: Kahle Acoustics
Lighting Consultant: Imagination
Landscape Architects: Rummey Design Associates
Contractor: Bovis Lend Lease

The artistic mission of this theatre complex is to engage its activities with the lives of local communities as a way to reach beyond the traditional idea of performance as a form of suspended reality and to elevate it into a form of knowledge.

The new facility is a theatre turned ‘inside out’, offering itself as a total resource for professional artists and community members to make and share theatre experience. This is made possible by re-thinking the traditional notion of the architectural membrane for a building of this type.

Two auditoria with seating capacities of 750 and 350 people share a large stage that can be divided by ‘curtains’ or shutters, to achieve maximum flexibility. The design enables the stage to be opened up to both, or either, of the auditoria as well as to the foyer spaces and indeed the street. In this way, the theatre opens up to the city beyond.