The new Bob & Tamar Manoukian Production Workshop for London’s Royal Opera House.

The design features an innovative ‘barrel vault’ frame constructed from a complex, but lightweight, triangulated truss of steel and cross-laminated timber covered in a sedum green roof. Two-storey prefabricated timber cassette panels used for the external walls allowed a tight construction programme to be achieved.

The vaulted building allows scenery to be fully assembled as on stage. The vault incorporates continuous rooflights set between the deep primary structural truss members to provide even daylight with reduced glare.,

The design includes workshop spaces, with a large paint-shop for vertical and horizontal scene-painting as well as carpentry and metal workshops. Optimised daylighting services the making and repairing of costumes, and a warehouse is designed to store over 20,000 costumes.

We developed the initial concept design by Nicholas Hare Associates.