Built in the 1960s, the Ingolstadt theatre was one of the first modern theatres in post-war Germany and is a great example of brutalist architecture with its faceted concrete walls and organic plan.
The competition was for the proposal of a new additional theatre building with 250 seats as well as additional theatre workshops. Central to the brief was to determine its relationship to the main theatre building. This was both in terms of the language of the architecture and its siting. Our approach – in collaboration with the award winning architectural practice, Haworth Tompkins, and the landscape designers, Latz + Partners – was to take the risky strategy of placing the new buildings in direct proximity to this historic building.
The ambition was an organic one, whereby the new buildings can be seen as both integral to the original, while distinctly separate. It is through the plan and massing that we sought to make a very direct connection, while the timber construction and cladding was in deliberate contrast to the mass of concrete.
