Elizabethan Theater at Chateau d’Hardelot
Le Théâtre Elisabéthain au Château D'Hardelot
Condette, France | 2014 - 2017
Ron Henderson, Andrew Madl Collaboration Studio Andrew Todd
Recognition World Architecture News, Wood Building of the Year, 2018. Nominee for European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award, 2016
Trees (6) English oaks are planted with an existing tulip poplar to form an arboreal circle in the meadow. Importantly, a stand of horse chestnuts and lindens adjacent to the theater were successfully conserved during the construction.
Credits Martin Argyroglo, Andrew Todd
Le théâtre du château d'Hardelot, The Elizabethan Theater at Chateau d'Hardelot, opened in June 2016 with the annual Midsummer Festival. The theater, which was commissioned by the District Council of the Pas de Calais, is the first permanent neo-Shakespearean theater in France and was presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on her 2016 state visit to France. The theater-in-the-round is the first building in the world constructed of curved unfinished cross-laminated-wood structural panels which allowed ultra-fast assembly of the theater in seven weeks. The new theater is located on a site rich with Anglo-French collaborative history, including being the site of the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain in 1904. LIRIO was landscape architect consultant with the architect, Studio Andrew Todd.
The landscape is distinguished by a stand of Aesculus hippocastanum (horse chestnut) and Tilia tomentosa (linden, or lime tree) that were preserved by the careful placement and pre-fabricated construction techniques of the theater. A ring of seven trees - 1 existing Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip poplar) and 6 new Quercus robur (English oak) - frame a path alongside the theater as it winds from the entrance gate to the Chateau. Paths of crushed local seashells give access to the theater and to the adjacent restored wetland meadow.
