Bard for good: encore for Shakespearean theatre
An artist’s impression of the development with the theatre as its centrepiece. Image: Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will
It is referred to by some as the Holy Grail of British theatre because it is believed to have been the long lost stage where The Bard’s star-crossed lovers’ eyes first met.
Now the well-preserved remains of a theatre where archaeologists believe Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was first performed will be exhibited permanently after developers were given the green light to build a new tower next door.
Hackney Council’s planning subcommittee tonight (Wednesday) granted Plough Yard Developments Ltd permission to erect a 40-storey residential skyscraper with bar, restaurant and shop space in Plough Yard, off Curtain Road, Shoreditch.
The building will tower above what is left of the Curtain Theatre, which dates back to the 16th century and lies three metres below ground.
The remains, described by conservation body English Heritage as “exceptionally well preserved”, will be put on display behind a sunken glass wall as part of plans by architects Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will, whose spokesman said:
“We intend to work with the local authority to ensure that the archaeological find becomes a vibrant focus for the local community, as well as one of Hackney’s principal attractions.
“We will be exploring how to achieve this during the coming months.”
Experts from English Heritage told the council the remains “could be ascribed international levels of significance”, adding: “At present Hackney has no scheduled ancient monuments which is a great shame and belies the historic significance of the borough.”
Objectors who responded to a consultation about the development complained that the skyscraper was out of keeping with the surrounding area and said they feared it would block sunlight to nearby properties.
Thirty nine units of affordable housing will be provided as part of the scheme.
The planning subcommitee, chaired by Councillor Vincent Stops, voted unanimously to approve the plans.
Well done Hackney! Good decision for all of London. Now let us hope that the developer gets on with it.
This is hideous. Redevelop yes but why like this? As long as Hackney, or at least its planning committee, continues to try and commercialise the borough’s recent cultural resurgence by clumsily emulating the anodyne high-rise aesthetic all too prevalent in its wealthier City neighbour, it will jeopardise the very soul, scale, character and identity that helped nurture that resurgence in the first place.
I disagree, unless you are willing to use public money to directly subsidise the cost of rent in places then the building form is not a driver of the story of an area but is only a byproduct and marker of that story. Hence why we put value in costly conservationism.
Berlin was reinvented by its post war concrete shells because they were once cheap and the city hooked into a globalised world. Hackney resurged due to its cheap empty Victorian warehouses sat right next to the financial centre of a global city.
Building form certainly creates a visual identity but this development doesn’t infringe on any part of Hackney that is remotely memorable in that way. Indeed due to its size it creates a new visual marker, an addition.
What might be lost in temporary space for an event is gained in a permanent showcase for a globally important historical set-piece. The tall residential aspect funds this and will give many people a good home with a good view. These are positive aspects for a city.
You hint that that this development should be more in-keeping with what you yourself imagine Hackney should look like but that is the path to pastiche and would have to generate even more expensive rents to fund the smaller numbers of units it would generate.
Unless you of course put up council rates by 10% and subsidise the land to get your low rise pastiche of a Victorian warehouse where once stood some 1970s industrial units covering a potential world heritage site?
Would this building have been given the green light if it had been proposed for stoke newington?I doubt it.Alot of those warehouses mentioned in shoreditch were built after the demolition of flats in the area and which were never replaced.
B Carrington – Do you think it unreasonable for those who are concerned about London’s extreme housing shortage, to ask those who are opposed to high-rise, high-density housing on brownfield sites in our inner-cities (such as this one) to come up with a viable alternative way of tackling the housing shortage?
Mr Denneberg, respectfully, I’m afraid I do not understand a single word of your
response. “Building form is only a byproduct”? Are you serious? So it doesn’t matter what buildings look like as long they arbitrarily serve a specified function? This, to my mind at least, is a recipe for urban disaster and I find the abdication of civic responsibility it implies breathtaking.
Hackney also provided “cheap empty Victorian warehouses sat right next to the financial centre of a global city” back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s when, for many, it was the byword for urban decline and wielded none of the gentrified cultural kudos it does today. I think you’ll find Hackney’s recent resurgence has much more to do with – for starters – it’s tradition of alternative counter-culture, the capital’s increasingly younger demographic and the borough’s expanding middle-class. It has nothing to do with the opportunistic commercial profiteering inherent in this monstrous scheme.
As for your statement that the development “doesn’t infringe on any part of Hackney that is remotely memorable” that is exactly the kind of arrogant superiority that flattened swathes of our inner-cities in the 1960s in the spurious name of “progress”. It may not be memorable to you and I may even concede that the area may be ripe for some kind of redevelopment, (although not the pastiche you falsely attribute towards me.)
But Plough Yard offers a quiet rendition of the contrast, spontaneity and richly layered fabric that makes London and Hackney so utterly compelling. It may well be shabby and unkempt and sorely lacking in a Costa Coffee or Waitrose. But to me if offers exactly the kind of character and versatility that rebuffs the threat of globalised identikit urbanity and is the stuff on which great cities thrive. It’s quite simple, we destroy this, or at least tamper with it inanely, at our peril.
And what on earth has good architecture got to do with hypothetical and disingenuiously sensationalist 10% council tax hikes? Please don’t tell me you think that this development or others like it is really going to lead to cheaper private rents? Unearth a historic site to public view and provide housing and regeneration by all means (see below). Just don’t do it by propagating abysmal 40-storey tower blocks for rich people that desecrate urban character and bear an unsettling resemblance to Godzilla.
Mr Hudd, like Mr Denneberg, as well as assuming that I don’t like high-rises (I happen to love them, I just don’t like crap architecture) your presumably rhetorical question falls into the common developer propagandist trap of assuming that high-rise schemes like this are aimed at easing London’s affordable housing shortage. They’re not; they’re aimed at making money.
Why else would this development just provide 40 (off-site) affordable housing units out of a whopping 385? And why else would more than a third of London’s brownfield land in less commercially lucrative areas like Dagenham and Bexley be lying undeveloped? So much for high density.
I’m afraid that if you think that just 40 flats are going to make any meaningful impact on London’s “extreme housing shortage” or on the almost 16,000 people on Hackney’s housing waiting list for that matter, then may I politely suggest that you might well be more deluded than Hackney’s planning committee.
With all of the building work planned for shoreditch the councils building enforcement unit is inadequate and lacking.This then becomes a problem for any residents who complain to the unit about any breaking of building regulations etc because these complaints fall on deaf ears.So before anyone at the council gives the go ahead on any more work they should have a look at the enforcement unit and see what is lacking.
Awful. Non a bad building design, but in the wrong place. Shame some beautiful warehouses like 18 Hewitt street will be lost. Did I see we changed the name from the stage (ugh) to the plough?
Does anyone know when this development is going to start?
Has this development started. My mum’s from Hackney & my English is on Shakespeare and really love to incorporate the Curtain.