Design process

The brief was for a new music school with practice rooms, teaching rooms and a large performance space, suitable for full orchestra rehearsals or a small ensemble with an audience of 200 along with specialist music facilities, including rock music, percussion, keyboards, recording/IT, staff facilities, a general office and storage space for musical instruments.

Despite the potential incompatibility of different acoustic demands, the school was keen to embrace all musical activity in the same building.

Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects carried out a masterplan for the future development of the Shrewsbury School campus and identified a suitable site for the music school, in a natural clearing between existing mature trees, part of the linear development of buildings around the central playing fields.

Various building forms were considered, and an elliptical form was chosen to maximise external frontage to give all rooms an outside view whilst having a compact internal circulation system acting as a spill out and acoustic buffer to the central auditorium space.

The design of the central auditorium developed from an elliptical to a facetted form to maximise acoustic performance. The entire timber roof structure took just two weeks for specialist carpenters to erect.