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STUDIO ANDREW TODD

Theatre, Chateau d'Arcangues

The Château d’Arcangues near Biarritz has an illustrious artistic history, having hosted Stravinsky, Ravel, Gide, Cocteau, Sinatra and many others. We were asked by its new owners, SA Château d’Arcangues, to design a permanent facility for visual and live arts. The project comprises a 400-seat theatre made for classical recital, jazz and unamplified performance, made entirely of wood and clad in extruded ceramic. Bathed in zenithal natural light streaming through its circular crown (the light is controllable through mechanical blinds), the building is also naturally ventilated with assistance for nocturnal cooling. The stage is generous and flexible, allowing rapid transforming for banquets, conferences and concerts of various formats.

 

An early twentieth-century carriage house is redesigned and renovated to house a private museum oriented around the owner’s collection, and a restaurant-greenhouse-front of house and parking building serves the whole site. A 34-room hotel organised around a central atrium (in the manner of a traditional Basque farmhouse) is proposed for the east of the site. All of the structures are in timber.

 

Working with our habitual partners Lirio, the scheme also looked at strategic planning for the larger site.

 

Team:

 

Studio Andrew Todd, architects and client advisers on the project brief

Andrew Todd

Maurits van der Staay

Andrew Tetrault

Donavon Staab

Federica von Euw

Eckersley O’Callaghan, Structural Engineers

INEX, MEP and sustainability engineers

BMF, Cost Consultants

LIRIO, Landscape Architects

Kanju, Theatre Technical Consultants

Charcoalblue, Auditorium Acoustics

Studio Jouan, Building Noise Acoustics

Xylotek, Timber Consultants

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