The three new facilities - a theatre, an education space and an art and new technology laboratory will help enable The Junction to realize its ambition of establishing a national centre of excellence for contemporary culture and entertainment.
At the heart of the new development is Junction 2, a modern and uniquely versatile 220 capacity performance space. Affectionately nicknamed The Shed, the timber clad structure will house a growing programme of contemporary drama, dance, spoken word, comedy and world music. Inspired by Georgian courtyard theatre, the auditorium bridges the distance between audience and artist in an intimate and compact design.
The architectural design team, led by Plowman Brown Architects, worked to achieve an intimate auditorium with good sightlines, which could accommodate small-scale dance, which needs a disproportionately large performance area. Special funding was secured from Arts Council England East to fund the dance specification. As a result the auditorium has a fully sprung timber dance floor finished in natural oak boards.
One of the major concerns of the professional design team was to ensure that the new 220 capacity auditorium retained the intimacy of Cambridge Drama Centre, where most of The Junction's programme of drama was presented up to the end of 2004. To this end, a 'courtyard' design has been used with upstairs seating in balconies on three sides. The large total stage area (required for dance) can transform, with the aid of drapes and lighting, to what appears to be a small stage for drama productions and solo performances. The seats can be easily removed or re-arranged to allow for end-on, side-on and 'in the round' productions.
Development director, Robin Townley, commented: "Because of the flexibility of the Theatre I genuinely hope that members of the audience attending two very different shows in the same space may conclude that we actually have two theatres - a small intimate small capacity studio theatre for new writing and drama and a larger Georgian Courtyard Theatre for dance."
Attendees will also appreciate the all day cafe bar at the front of the new theatre, set in a dramatic double-height, sunny glass fronted foyer it forms the social hub of the new facilities and already has its own programme of pre-show entertainment.
For theatre practitioners the new possibilities within the new space will be enormous. All spaces have been designed with flexible technical infrastructures that will allow artists to experiment with different performance styles and lighting designs and to easily integrate new technology. The Tension Wire Grid above the auditorium allows technicians to walk on a net of stretched steel wires in order to reach the theatre lighting, which behaves as if it is invisible to the lights. The Auditorium is acoustically tuned for the spoken word, with acoustic and reflective panels carefully located around the walls, and is equipped with an extensive technical infrastructure that includes a CAT 6 structured cabling system connecting Junction 5, a dedicated New Technology production laboratory to all other spaces in the complex. This infrastructure includes copper and fibre connections.
Robin Townley added "A great deal of thought has gone into ensuring that the new technical infrastructure of The Junction's spaces genuinely gives us the best chance of supporting the young artists of tomorrow. We don't know what the next form of live performance to emerge might be, but we have built in as much flexibility as possible to ensure that we will be equipped to support it."
Junction 4 is designed for participation, community use and artists' residencies.
