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| Photo: Morley von Sternberg |
Dance East is an agency offering opportunities to engage with dance for people of all ages and levels of ability, from professionals to children. Formerly operating out of four different sites in Ipswich, its director, Assis Carreiro, had already formulated a brief for a dedicated home when she was approached by John Lyall and his development partner Wharfside Regeneration. Lyall’s aim was to make Dance East a cultural partner in a bid to the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) to regenerate a historic area of dockside in the centre of Suffolk’s county town. The partnership of commerce and culture was the key to unlocking the development, the first phase of which has recently opened.
The development refashions a historic site on the River Orwell close to the city centre, formerly occupied by Cranfields Mill which until 10 years ago ground East Anglian corn and sent it worldwide from the adjacent docks. The mixed-use development comprises 375 apartments and duplexes, Dance East and its associated spin-offs – a cafe and dance shop, therapy room, resource library and seminar room – as well as spaces for future restaurants, bars and shops.
On the corner of a new courtyard, which is the heart of the new development, the apartments tower over the dockside with a colourful optimism reminiscent of early modernism. On the remaining sides of the courtyard are new apartments over retail space. Facing the river wharf, historic buildings are exposed at ground level, waiting for future funding to complete the ensemble.
This is not a good moment for real estate. Arriving here feels like I am a year too late. The flats are slow to sell (who is surprised?) and the retail units are boarded up. Yet there is a quayside cafe and a hum of activity coming from this complex. Unfinished though it is, there is a feeling of anticipation, as if something really big is about to happen.
The complex signals a step change in confidence for Ipswich. The centre of the town retains a sense of its past, small in scale and with a medieval street pattern, but towards the river an industrial scale appears, the product of an outward-looking grandeur. Twentieth century developments such as Norman Foster’s Willis Faber Dumas building (1975) and town centre shopping malls began to erase the city’s fine texture through blunt real-estate calculations based on net area and single uses. The Cranfields Mill development finds a different approach that conjoins commerce, leisure and culture in one rounded neighbourhood.
The presence of the Jerwood DanceHouse is central to what makes this place special. Wharfside Regeneration provided the shell and core for Dance East, which raised the remainder of the funds required to build its vision from a wide variety of sources. It comprises four studios of different character. The Studio Theatre (16 by 20 metres) is a ground floor performance space with backstage, access to changing rooms, bleacher seating, lighting rig and a performance area of 15 by 12 metres. It seats 200 in various arrangements but the seating can retract to allow for a larger area for production and rehearsal. White-painted walls are lined at low level with acoustic beech ply and with its sprung wood floor, the space is clean and utilitarian, focussing on the event rather than drawing attention to itself.
The ground floor also has a Wellbeing Studio that is used for all sorts of movement classes. Here the proximity to College Road with its thundering lorries has meant the total isolation of the structure from the foundations through the provision of a sprung dance floor on a suspended concrete slab. While the studio is naturally lit by west- and north-facing windows, the acoustic problems of its corner location required the use of mechanical ventilation. A few opening windows, however, allow users control over some aspects of their own comfort.
Above these spaces lie the Sir Frederick Ashton Studio (12 by 12 metres) and the Red Shoe Studio (16 by 20 metres) which can be divided in two with sliding acoustic partitions. In the latter, a deep horizontal strip of high-level glazing faces east over the courtyard toward the housing opposite, allowing the residents a ringside seat on studio activities.
The studios form a family of white-painted, comfort-cooled, daylit spaces all offering sprung floors, mirrors and barres, cubby hole storage for the ubiquitous clutter deposited by dancers, storage for sound gear and large flat panels of lighting and acoustic panelling suspended from the ceilings. Yet each has a different character resulting principally from its size and location in the building, views and quality of light. Finishes are simple, everyday and workable and support rooms are colour-coded for ease of navigation.
The group of studios is held together by a three-storey foyer accessed off the improved Foundry Lane, running north from the dockside. Here the raw, utilitarian character of the architecture has been softened by the introduction of a suspended sculpture of coloured tutus (by Stuart Haygarth) and from the thick walls of the Studio Theatre Lyall has carved out a slatted recess for waiting students and performance attendees. The presence of bodies tempers the robust surfaces, filling the foyer with colour and sound.
The development at College Street is a major achievement for client, architect and developer alike. Although the market is slow, these things are a matter of time and the current situation reminds us that great places did not spring into existence overnight, as business plans would like.
Moreover, this development reminds us that in the role of ‘entrepreneur’, architects can contribute significantly to the reinvention of towns and cities. Using imagination combined with a degree of pragmatism, we can make our own luck through collaborative working. In an era when architects undersell themselves through uneconomically low fee bids and clients demand that entire schemes be designed at Expression of Interest stage, this project is a rallying cry that we need not be the slaves of others.
The architect like John Lyall, who has a vision, uses his initiative and networks to forge partnerships and then brings his design skills to propose a radical reinvention, deserves to prosper. This project was conceived in the boom times but its message – that we need to re-evaluate the concept of what we do – is most appropriate to the current situation and could be more timely. Long live the architect-entrepreneur.
Sarah Wigglesworth is the founder of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, whose projects include the Siobhan Davies Dance Centre in London, and is professor of architecture at the University of Sheffield.
Project team
Architect: John Lyall Architects; design team: John Lyall, Chris Bills, Laura Brax, Mark Dempsey, India Aspin, Rob Scott, Neil Young, Paul Gammon, Sze Tang; project manager: Mouchel; cost consultant: Gardiner & Theobald; services engineer: Harley Haddow Consulting Engineers; acoustic engineer: Paul Gillieron Acoustic Design; theatre consultant: Carr & Angier; structural engineer: Price & Myers; contractor: Laing O’Rourke, Morgan Ashurst; client: Dance East.
Selected suppliers and subcontractors
Acoustic ceiling panels: RPG Europe; acoustic sliding partitions: Brockhouse Modern Fold; acoustic sliding doors: Clark Door; lift: Schindler Lifts; sprung dance floors: Junckers; vinyl dance floors: Harlequin; coloured screed: Lafarge; non-slip floor tiles: Grestec; balustrades: Brass Age; ballet barres and mirrors: Glass Installations; sand cement render: N&S Plastering; decorative glass: Fusion Glass.
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