Location: London, England.

Architect: Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

The regeneration of the East Wing of the ‘People’s Palace’ has breathed new life into a much-loved cultural icon, bringing spaces that have been inaccessible to the public for 80 years back into use. To preserve the evocative and layered character of the Victorian Theatre, East Court and adjoining areas, far-reaching interventions were called for. The approach to bringing the theatre back to life was a conservation and business planning challenge, focusing on its extraordinary scale, richly evocative interiors and potential to provide an exceptionally atmospheric but highly flexible space. Our work preserves the theatre’s special character while carrying out significant alterations and insertions. The theatre’s sloping floor has been replaced with a new, level, and seats have been added above the two side corridors.

The roof structure has been re-engineered to support 64 rigging points, and the elaborate plasterwork ceiling has been conserved and consolidated from above. The ceiling is treated as an artefact that tells of the opulence, decay and rebirth of the theatre. Ultimately, we wanted people to have the same reaction to the space that they had when they first saw it before the project began. The East Court, a vast glazed space originally conceived as an exhibition hall, has many roles in the contemporary Palace complex. It is now an entrance hall, an exhibition space, a venue for functions and events, a meeting place, and a multi-functional, accessible space.

The exhibition design embodies the long history of stage and scenery at the Palace, using a language of demountable, large-scale structures that can be reconfigured to tell future stories. A major intervention is a new floor, designed to provide the canvas for a 1000sqm artwork painted by graphic artists Art+Believe. The East Wing project has resulted in a new decorative scheme for the Victorian fabric, based on ‘paint scrapes’ and historic research. This approach of “arrested decay” was used to address the mechanisms of deterioration, remove unsafe elements, and present the result to public view as a direct manifestation of the stories embodied in the spaces.