In section, the structure, with a very shallow dual-pitch roof, suggests an archaic barn, and only two features contradict this: a two-storey, de Chirico-ish timber banner frame-cum-campanile with a nominal public square in front of it and the clean-lined ground floor reception volume and covered colonnade, which project from the north and east façades respectively. The theatre is essentially composed of four materials: a concrete plinth which steps up once at the north end of the sloping site and extrudes handsomely formed external benches a larch cross-laminated timber main structure beech details and Viroc particle board rainscreen panels and internal flooring – a pinky-terracotta shade for the former, slate-grey tessellations for the latter. I want this to be a living, breathing theatre with a civic feel and a life outside the school.’ ‘It’s for sharing with the wider community. ‘The theatre is not just for us,’ explains Tollit. The headmaster, Giles Tollit, is a classicist and thinks of the school as a small town the David Brownlow Theatre is therefore Horris Hill’s Epidaurus – well, the back of it, anyway, where the architects have fashioned a very simple stepped grassy auditorium next to the rear façade. I want this to be a living, breathing theatre with a civic feel and a life outside the school
In one sense, this is fitting: the theatre stands on the southern edge of the school’s architectural macaroni of buildings, including the 1888 brick and tile-hung main building, which has a peculiar faux-Classical PoMo portico, a barn-like gym, a main academic block that resembles a generic suburban rest home, and a stableyard-like building crowned with a bumptious pop-up structure which PG Wodehouse might have described as ‘Bally Well Baroque’.
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