Young Vic opens today

Haworth Tompkins has restored the Young Vic to it's former glory. The design of the Young Vic was developed over many months of presentation, discussion and improvisation with theatre artists, local people and Young Vic staff. The building now allows many different patterns of use, overlapping a public and private area that enables a number of different possibilities for arrival, circulation and leave taking. The original auditorium, although a great success, proved to have some drawbacks. The adapted auditorium retains much of the old fabric but adds a new layer of get-round and entrances, raising the height with a new lighting grid and providing a moveable wall and demountable gallery in to the large new workshop. The maximum seating capacity and number of configurations has been substantially increased within the same footprint. The build cost was just under £7m and the project opens on time and on budget.