Architects must consider the ways in which future audiences will interact with arts venues, says Jake Orr of A Younger Theatre
Last November, as part of the OMA/Progress exhibition at the Barbican Centre, I attended a panel discussion on architecture, audiences and the arts called Designing for the next generation: what’s the future of arts venues? Part lecture, part chaired discussion, the focus of the evening was on how architects are working to design arts venues that impact on future generations of audiences (and artists). The event was brought to my attention by Rob Harris, director of Arup, who had read an article in Auditora Magazine in which I discussed the effect that buildings – notably The Royal Opera House, Barbican Centre and Young Vic – have on young people.
Harris’s presentation seemed very fitting for A Younger Theatre, touching on the consideration architects must give to the ways in which future audiences (current young people) will interact with an arts venue. Harris presented several issues which venues will be affected by and have an impact on: affordability, sustainability, accessibility, interaction, attraction and participation. Each holds a consideration and challenge for an architect designing the future cultural buildings we inhabit.
It was saddening, but perhaps not surprising, that Harris spoke of affordability, the costs of designing, consulting on, and eventually building a venue in the “current economic climate”. He also spoke about venues having to adapt to suit their financial situations, resorting to hiring spaces for conferences and functions. These hires can mean the venue is worth more for its facilities than its artistic programming. How can future arts venues retain the versatility to support their artistic work without falling prey to becoming a conference centre? With recent funding cuts, cultural venues are already having to make this shift. I hear Barnet’s artsdepot is resorting to hiring out its spaces in the wake of Barnet Council cutting close to £200,000 funding to the building.
But it was not all doom and gloom. There was also promise and hope about the way in which future buildings will function to allow young people to see them as a place to visit. Harris spoke of the need for venues to become social meeting points, offering what young people have come to expect from a space: free Wi-Fi and free Fair Trade coffee in a relaxed and friendly environment. The idea being that if young people meet socially in the venue, they might be encouraged to see its artistic work, too.
This, as I mention in Auditoria Magazine, is similar to my opinions of the Young Vic; the bar is the central focus of the building, where actors, directors, technicians and audiences alike rub shoulders as they navigate around the venue. The stage door is the same as the entrance for the audience. Yet this need for social integration is also about the need for future venues to allow a future audience to interact with them. We’re not talking about social media and marketing as a form of interaction, but of real, physical play. As Harris suggested, young audiences want to be able to control their experience.
With the ubiquitousness of smartphones and computers, young people want to experience “before they have left home, to continue whilst they are in the space and also after they have left”. It’s not just about scanning codes and tweeting, it’s also about the physical pushing of boundaries and walls, to shape and curate a venue – or as Harris put it: “to mess it up”.
At this point, I thought of Hide&Seek’s Sandpit events at the Southbank Centre, encouraging adults to play games within the venue. Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Centre, later referred to the Barbican’s exploration of performances in its foyer spaces, allowing the building to develop beyond its originally defined spaces. A venue’s structure can be tested and challenged, inviting interaction beyond its original confines. This interaction is key to how architects should see, or at least question, their design of venues in the future.
Going back to Harris’ other considerations, he spoke about sustainability – both in an environmental sense and a financial sense. Venues are now incorporating far better environmentally sound instruments and technologies, with older buildings playing catch up. Harris cited one gallery taking environmental concerns ahead of customer comforts, the heating being cooler and thus less fuel wasting, but less warming for the art goer. In this instance, wearing a jumper was the small price to pay for a more environmentally friendly building.
Another suggestion for sustainability was arts venues incorporating high street shops, a commercial investment that could attract a new audience with functions other than pure artistic merit. Although, as Harris commented, we have to be careful that artistic programming does not become the “theatre of a high street”, where you “don’t need to worry about seeing a show because you know it will be back the following year, being able to guess the artistic programming”.
There is a wider consideration here: what about multidisciplinary venues, such as the Barbican, that become a hub of activity beyond artistic programming? Should we do away with arts venues altogether and instead install artistic structures/spaces within shopping centres and car parks? This led to a discussion of the use of found spaces and temporary structures that has become increasingly common.
Kenyon cited You Me Bum Bum Train last year taking over a disused building because the work couldn’t fit into the Barbican, but the artistic vision was worth pursuing. These developments of older buildings, rethinking our ideas of a performance space, draw audiences to new areas and feats of exploration within a building they have not experienced before. You would hope this would add a layer of understanding or at least the potential for audiences to look at traditional building-based facilities in a new light.
There were tensions within the discussion between arts venues that cater to the artist, and those that took more traditional routes of stage, seats and boundaries – especially from Nicholas Payne, director of Opera Europe, with his work transforming the Coliseum and Royal Opera House. What do artists really want when creating work in a venue? As one audience member noted, there is a need for a blank canvas to project ideas onto, but also an argument for a confined structure to impose the artist’s work into. The answer is that we need both, but I can understand the desire to have artistic practitioners exploring the process of designing a venue of the future with an architect.
There were also some interesting points raised by Liaz Foir, co-founder of MUF Architects, on the community impact of a venue – how it forms and shapes the local area. Arts venues should reflect our society and values, they should reverberate through our communities and, if done well, should offer a place of play and learning from a young age.
It is my own belief that venues and theatres as a whole have a long way to go before they can be places that young people happily gravitate towards. There is an intrinsic barrier that needs to be displaced, and this is as much about programming as it is about building design. Until we do away with boundaries for a sense of openness that allows young people to feel intimately connected to the work on our stages, we will increasingly discourage younger audiences.
Harris made a statement that seemed to resonate with me afterwards, that those older audiences that grace some of our nation’s top venues have to be replaced for venues to survive. The question is: are our venues being designed and programmed to encourage the next generation? I guess we’ll have to wait and see (or encourage younger architects to develop new practices for designing future art venues).
This content was originally published by A Younger Theatre