Stirling Prize-winning dance centre should get accelerated consideration after storm damage, says campaign group
Government heritage adviser Historic England has been asked to fast-forward its listing appraisal for Herzog & de Meuron’s Stirling Prize-winning Laban Centre dance studio in south-east London following damage inflicted by Storm Eunice last month.
Campaign group the Twentieth Century Society last year applied to Historic England seeking grade-II* listing for the building at Deptford, which won the UK’s premier architecture prize in 2003, after concerns about a pipeline of high-rise development in the surrounding area.
It says that damage to the Laban Centre’s cladding, in the same storm that shredded part of the canopy of RSHP’s O2 Centre, means repairs will be necessary. The C20 Society wants Historic England to give its listing bid rapid consideration to ensure that any significant repair work is “suitably conservation-led”.
The centre, at Creekside, features semi-translucent glass and coloured polycarbonate cladding that allows traces of dance and movement to be visible through the walls. At night, the building illuminates the surrounding area with light and movement spilling out.
室内的结构是城市街景，旨在提供激发灵感的空间，反映了舞蹈的流畅动作。
拉班中心不仅是世界上最大的现代舞蹈工作室的所在地，也是赫尔佐格和德梅隆在英国的第一个建成的新项目。它比泰特现代美术馆的扩建早了十多年，尽管不是贾尔斯·吉尔伯特·斯科特(Giles Gilbert Scott)的Bankside发电站改造成泰特现代美术馆本身。
If the C20 Society’s listing bid is approved, the Laban Centre would become the youngest listed building in the country and the first 21stcentury project on the national register.
C20 Society caseworker Coco Whittaker said the centre was a “beautiful and intelligent” building with a “wonderfully mutable character” that responded to changes in its environment in a way that was reminiscent of impressionist of Claude Monet’s paintings.
她说:“它的水面板呈现出各种微妙的颜色，因为它们反射或忽略光线，在一天的不同时间隐藏或暴露内部发生的舞蹈。”
“In this way, its architecture is not static but fantastically performative. We hope that Historic England will agree that the Laban centre is clearly of Grade II* quality.”
The C20 Society said planning permission granted to Galliard Homes and developer Kitewood’s Creekside Village East development in 2020 – with designs by Squire & Partners – had contributed to its decision to pursue a listing bid for the Laban Centre.
The scheme includes 393 homes in two blocks of up to 30 storeys, in addition to a five-storey extension to the Laban Centre, which will provide additional performance, rehearsal and studio space.
4Readers' comments