One of the UK’s leading conservatoires, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, is located in the City of London. Its new performance venue at Milton Court is now complete — part of a larger development project undertaken by Heron International. Aedas Arts Team is architect for the performance complex.
The new venue provides a 608-seat concert hall — with an acoustic rating of PNC 15 and an extendable concert platform — and a 223-seat proscenium arch theatre. It also provides a flexible-configuration studio theatre, a TV studio suite, three sprung floor rehearsal spaces and two-level foyers with cafés and bars.
The Heron residential accommodation, which forms a major part of the complex, and the performance venue are two distinct elements separated compositionally by a six storey atrium that introduces light deep into the school’s internal spaces.
Aedas Arts Team’s theme for the performance complex was inspired by Barbara Hepworth’s 1943 sculpture Oval Sculpture, the timber exterior of which is carved out to reveal a pure white interior. This has been reversed: a white exterior carved out to reveal warm timber-lined internal volumes.
