@sohoplace is the first new build West End theatre in 50 years, owned by Nica Burns and operated by Nimax Theatres, located at 4 Soho Place on Charing Cross Road. Designed by AHMM as part of the wider Soho Place project for Derwent London in close collaboration with Derwent London, Crossrail, Transport for London and Arup, comprising office space, retail and a new public plaza. The theatre’s 602-seat auditorium was designed by architects Haworth Tompkins and theatre consultants Charcoalblue in collaboration with engineers Arup and stage engineering specialist, Tait.
A rich palette of materials, inspired by Nica Burns’ visit to the ancient Greek open air theatre of Epidaurus, includes end grain oak, midnight blue wall linings, Royal Gold finished metalwork, star constellation lighting and bars in Italian marble and Lemurian labradorite. The auditorium, designed by a specialist team led by architects Haworth Tompkins and theatre consultants, Charcoalblue, in collaboration with engineers Arup and stage engineering specialist, TAIT Engineering, offers up to 602 seats with a perfect acoustic and clear sightlines. A promenade sequence of unique backlit stairs lead audiences up to the upper level galleries and interval bars which are wrapped in glazing to allow patrons to observe the city during intervals and become part of the theatre of the city themselves for passers-by.
The theatre occupies the basement, ground and first to fifth storeys of the building, with 18,000 square feet of independent boutique office space on the sixth, seventh and eighth floors above. The technical challenges of building a theatre above and around the Elixabeth Line station infrastructure necessitated the highly engineered architecture and design of a Swiss watch but built on an urban scale, achieving elimination of vibrations and highly controlled acoustics.
