Working Day 2: The corridor moves on...

On Day 2, the team moved quickly to complete the corridor.

The side of the corridor facing into the studio has been double-boarded with plywood and plasterboard. It will also be padded internally with sound-reducing material. The side of the corridor facing towards Eastern Lane Car Park has been left open at the moment so that the theatrical installers, Black Light, can access it to run cabling when they come onto site on Monday 14 March.

At the moment the corridor looks like this:

The corridor is wide and bright. It's going to make a great place for displaying art exhibitions as it gets lots of natural light. It will be carpeted later in the month, and then painted in soft neutral colours to keep it bright and cheerful.

There's now a ten day break until the next contractors, Black Light, come onto the site on 14 March to complete a huge electrical and technical installation, including a whole new lighting grid, new house and working lights, new sound system, black-out curtaining, projector and screen installation etc etc etc. This work is expected to take around a week...

In the meantime, the whole space including the walls and ceiling, will be painted a matt black to stop distracting light reflections. This work will be carried out by an in-house Maltings team to save money... It's a big job, but we're looking forward to it.

Working Day 1: Work begins on the Henry Travers Studio, 28 February 2011

Work has commenced on the Henry Travers Studio. We're going to keep updating our blog as progress continues towards creating this world-class new venue.

So, we started with this:

At 7.30am on Monday 28 February, George Hepburn & Son, the first of our four contractors, arrived on site to commence the work. At that point, the Studio looked like this:

George's team of builders had arrived to build the new corridor on the right of the photo above. This corridor is essential to link Front of House with the dressing rooms, green room, orchestra pit and Main House Stage, so that people can access these areas while a performance or film is taking place in the studio.

You can see in the 3d image below the corridor and sound-reducing double-entry doors which George's team arrived to construct. The double doors at the centre top of the image are designed to create a 'sound-lock' to reduce the noise transference from a busy box office into the studio during performances and film screenings.

By the end of day one, the new corridor was taking shape: