Building study: David Brownlow Theatre by Jonathan Tuckey Design
29 January 2021 By Jay Merrick . Photography by Jim Stephenson & Nick Dearden
A studied miscellany of materials and styles add performance spaces and a new civic presence to a prep school near Newbury, writes
Jay Merrick.
The architectural skin and bones of the David Brownlow Theatre at Horris Hill prep school present a conundrum. Everything about the building’s form, elevations and interiors are extremely distinct; and yet, encountered as an object in an 85-acre setting that is part hamlet, part landscape, the building ushers the mind and senses into a pleasing state of puzzlement. Despite the clarity of Jonathan Tuckey Design’s scheme, it’s impossible to give the architecture a cast-iron typological label.