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Round-About-Bradford

 

Round-About-Bradford

Proposal for a meanwhile project with Bradford 2025 City of Culture for a new touring venue to support access to world-class cultural performances, presentations and collaborations throughout the district’s diverse communities

Creating connections and welcoming fresh audiences through play, Round-About-Bradford is a unique place designed for new cultural presentations and collaborations during Bradford City of Culture 2025. Drawing on the notion that “all the world’s a stage” - the design, construction and use is all part of a performance, where people who visit become protagonists in play and amazement, where every individual has a role to play. Round-About-Bradford embraces a fairground like spirit with a sense of wonder to create a place to be silly and serious.

 
 
 

In response to a brief from Bradford 2025 to create a “beautiful touring venue which will be sited in neighbourhoods across the District, providing a space for gatherings, exhibitions, conversation and performance”, our team came together from across the UK:

  • Common Wealth, exciting theatre company making site-specific, political and contemporary theatre from Bradford and Cardiff;

  • Charcoalblue, a global theatre consultancy;

  • Field Practice, a multi-disciplinary practice providing simple, practical and ecological solutions across architecture and structural engineering;

  • and, Reeves & Bond, creative carpentry and specialist fabricators. 

Round-About-Bradford is a proposal centred around a circular performance space to form an adaptable, flexible and inclusive venue for the wide ranging programme needs of the City of Culture. 

 
 

The Concept

 
 
 

Community

Everyone is considered invited to Round-About-Bradford, it is a pavilion of the people. It’s shared ownership is reflected via a co-designed and co-produced fabric drape to reflect the diversity of Bradford and its culture. This fabric serves multiple purposes: addressing the need for a reconfigurable venue and changing acoustic requirements, decoration and character of the venue, and echoing the communities of Bradford, exploring the multitude of identities and shared histories, ultimately enriching the cultural experience for visitors. 

 

Over summer 2023 we trialled initial engagement, opening up dialogues with communities of Bradford to reflect their experiences of their neighbourhoods.

 
 

Design must respond to its audience, at Round-About-Bradford there will be a balance between the familiar and the friendly with the unusual and 'special'. The colour palette, materiality and moving parts can all be read in reference to travelling theatres and fairgrounds in their glitz and glamour, and in the way they invite you to the unexpected. 

Round-About-Bradford is formed of:

  • Podium, creating a level base at each location

  • Scaffold Superstructure, handling all structural requirements

  • Central flexible Performance Space

  • A series of Support Spaces, and

  • A series of Play Components

New Public Space

Round-About-Bradford creates a pavilion-like area through which people can pass with ease and allows for an informality of engagement with the structure and the programme. This new public space creates multiple opportunities to 'mess with' the structures, including moments to peek inside at a performance. When the performance space is fully opened and the whole structure becomes alive with activity and movement. 

Play 

Round-About-Bradford is not about gimmicks, its power is in bringing people together to experience excellent cultural programming from theatre to film, and music to contemporary visual art. Play is a driver to do this and is an offer to each host community, bringing joy and colour.  Casual interactions with friends, family and neighbours is encouraged through these performative play structures, from chilling in an oversized sling seat to singing your heart out on the open-access stage, there is a comfortable way for everyone to connect with Round-About-Bradford.

The Play Components are central to an approach of turning the Round-About-Bradford inside-out, creating visual links from outside to the performance and audience space allowing for passers-by to engage without engaging an make light-touch connection to the cultural off of Round-About and the City of Culture. The Play Components are part of a wider approach to creating soft thresholds for Round-About, smaller interventions and elements are sprinkled along the trail to the venue from all directions, allowing audiences to stumble into the unexpected on a walk.

 
 

Performance Space

As an intimate and flexible space, Round-About-Bradford has been designed to play host to a number of different performance types and experiences. With flexibility and democratic assembly at the heart of the scheme, the shape of the space surrounds and encloses those within. In collaboration with Charcoalblue, we have identified and responded to a number of layout and configuration options. All formats are fully accessible with permanent and temporary wheelchair positions and companion seats provided.

Support Spaces

Supporting Spaces are located around the perimeter of the Scaffold Superstructure which can move according to site requirements and constraints to allow Round-About-Bradford to respond to each context uniquely without a complex redesign. Each uses the timber brick component as a structural facade and are designed to aid legacy rehoming with community organisations in their communities. These include: 

  • Gallery

  • Meeting Room/Workshop Space

  • Front of House/Welcome Space

  • Store and Technical Control back-of-house

  • Dressing Room

 

  • Entranceway

  • Quiet, Reflective Space

  • Cafe Bar

  • Family Space

  • Access ramps

Assembly and Disassembly

Round-About-Bradford is designed for simplicity of construction and deconstruction. All components rely on simple connection details which can be put together without complex equipment.

Round-About-Bradford will first be visible coming out of the ground as a large scaffold cube, which can be used to lift all elements at height: a large circular rigging truss, Mirror Curtain and the Mirror Beacon. At the base self-supporting walls are formed of timber brick components which come together in patterns to form distinct wall types. Playful pieces and Bespoke Drapes festoon the scaffold and bring the proposal together.

Legacy

We started from a position of avoiding build and burn, seeking to ensure each material has a considered Before- and After-Life. This is especially important for temporary structures. With each of the components of the Round-About their longer lifespan has been central to the choice to use.

  • the Podium, Scaffold Superstructure and Play Elements make use of reusable and waste free scaffold and rigging components

  • the Performance Space and Support Spaces use a timber brick with simple connection details allowing for reuse and reconfiguration into stand-alone pavilions, planters or seating

  • the interior drape can be repurposed as legacy items in collaboration with Bradford 2025 and local creative industries, connecting with Bradford's heritage in the textiles industry.