Nevill Holt Opera

Nevill Holt Opera

Located in the courtyard of a second-degree listed former stable building, the opera hall was designed by Witherford Watson Mann Architects.

Building off the existing stone walls offered several substantial benefits: it enabled us to create a single large volume, extending the courtyard upwards; it used structural capacity that was already there; it avoided substantial new columns obscuring the walls. However, bearing new structure onto the stone walls was not straightforward. We needed to spread the point load from the new steel beams and posts, at the same time tiptoeing around the existing trussed rafters. The solution arrived at with Price and Myers was to bed precast concrete padstones between the rafters onto the existing top surface of the wall; a steel ring beam above these padstones forms the base for the steel columns. The stone wall was given a new capping, with creasing tiles bedded in lime mortar, and a ironstone coping.

The new walls and ceiling above the stone walls are lined in Douglas Fir boards, of irregular widths and with projecting beads to assist in diffusing the sound. The wall lining steps in as you might expect of a roof; in the depth created by this step, attenuated ducts are formed for the ventilation extract. The wooden boards are sand-blasted, lyed and treated with a flame retardant, and have the bleached, raw appearance of driftwood; their texture is echoed by the board-marked precast concrete of the stalls walkway.

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