The Architectural Historian Issue 12, 2021
Retuning the Royal Academy of Music
Ian Ritchie revisits his award-winning 2018 design for RAM, celebrated in Anna Picard’s new book, Musical Architects: Creating Tomorrow’s Royal Academy of Music, published by Unicorn in March 2021
The Royal Academy of Music will celebrate its Bicentenary as Britain’s oldest conservatoire next year. Situated on the Marylebone Road at the edge of Regents Park, within the Marylebone conservation area, the campus consists of the main building with its listed façade and The Duke’s Hall, both designed by Sir Ernest George, and more recent buildings. These include 1-5 York Gate, designed by John Nash in 1822.
Ian Ritchie Architects completed the feasibility study and won the competition to take on the design and completion of a new theatre within the campus’ old courtyard, between several buildings already containing an uninspiring and technically limited 240-seat fan-shaped theatre.
The anchor for this project was the relationship of complete trust and affinity that developed between the client Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, principal of RAM, and Ian Ritchie, the architect leading the design team. That powerful synergy, which enhanced the original brief to create a special ambience and facilities befitting the Academy, spread amongst all the participants in the project and included Susie Sainsbury, who introduces the book ‘Musical Architects’. She brought her knowledge of large redevelopment projects to the client body to give them a clear understanding of what they were in for, but also what the ultimate prize could be.
Part of the architects’ in-depth research included conceptual investigations exploring the nature of the human voice and how the warmth of wood could be exploited through understanding the design and manufacture of stringed instruments. The interior ‘architectural’ spaces within the latter were inspirational. Images of the inside of a violin flooded by light (part of a photographic series by Romanian artist Adrian Borda) were particularly inspiring for the spatial ideas and interior spaces of the theatre and recital hall. The beauty of bows, strings and their tuning mechanisms also informed the structural design of the recital hall roof and the long glazed lobby outside it. These subtle references create a visual coherence felt only subconsciously by the public, but absolutely vital to the feel of the spaces.
During the design process the client-architect duo conceived the idea to exploit the roof space, the last available area into which the Academy could expand, by placing a recital hall above the theatre auditorium. The real challenge was isolating the recital hall, the theatre, the adjacent plant room, and the glazed lobby from each other both visually and acoustically. The recital hall floats on a concrete slab supported on deep steel beams and an air void within which are 300 elastomeric bearings tuned to the correct frequencies to isolate it. These in turn support the precast concrete panels supporting the recital hall’s oak timber floor. The architects worked with ARUP’s acoustic engineers to establish the many sensitive acoustic adjacencies at the initial design stages, and developed detailed designs from these acoustic ‘directives’ which did make this complex design demanding during construction.
The acoustically designed wood interior of the theatre, including a doubly-curved balcony front, and the recital hall were fine-tuned with Arup and James Johnson, a joinery company who combined analogue craft with digital engineering to produce the prototypes for acoustic testing. By using wood, it was possible to tune the spaces and adjust sound reflection and diffusion by varying the walls’ surface depth and profile. Warmly coloured cherry wood was chosen for the theatre, which is beautifully illuminated with crystal fibre optic lights suggesting a starry universe derived from the idea of an exploded chandelier, and lime-washed oak for the recital hall, where the grain of the wood and the fall of light from the oculus above follow the same path.
The ‘interface space’ between the main RAM building and the new theatre/recital hall achieves a key part of the enhanced client’s brief: to integrate the theatre with the main building. It creates a visual and physical link between the old and new buildings as well as making RAM fully accessible for the first time. By opening previously bricked-up windows the architects brought natural light into the historic 1911 building and allow glimpses into the renovated interiors of practice rooms, visually integrating the Academy’s activities with its structure.
Within 24hrs of its royal opening night in March 2018, word had already spread in the international musical world that RAM had delivered two new acoustically outstanding public venues. ‘The spaces are stunningly beautiful, acoustically brilliant and inspiring. They will raise the bar and challenge the students and staff in every possible form of music to reach higher and search further.’ Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Principal, Royal Academy of Music
‘Musical Architects’ is not simply about architecture. It tells the story of a renowned conservatoire, of musicians and people who love music, and how architecture can be transformational when a great client and architect work in harmony, sharing a process which allows them to reach far beyond the expected. The second chapter, a conversation between Freeman-Attwood and Ritchie, is a masterclass in the importance of client and architect relations and an intimate look into how a great building comes to be.
MUSICAL ARCHITECTS – Creating Tomorrow’s Royal Academy of Music
Unicorn, London, 17 March 2021
Hardback, 224 pages
ISBN 978-1-912690-72-5
www.unicornpublishing.org
Images:
The lobby between the old building and the new at the Royal Academy of Music, 2018
The new Theatre at the Royal Academy of Music, 2018
The Recital Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, 2018
Photos and copyright: Adam Scott, 2018
