Royal National Theatre Studio

Former theatre scenery workshops, wardrobe stores and offices to the Old Vic Theatre, originally called the Old Vic Annexe, now studios and offices to the Royal National Theatre. Built 1957-58 by Lyons Israel Ellis, with assistants John Miller and Christopher Dean; Hajnal and Myers as engineers.

The building is constructed with a reinforced concrete frame, exposed internally and externally with boardmarked finish and china clay aggregate, now painted. Non load-bearing engineering brick and some foam slag blocks on the ground floor infill the frame. A board room overlooking Webber Street is of monolithic reinforced concrete. An aluminium monopitch roof covers the main front range; the rear roof is flat and asphalt-covered, inset with slanted rooflights which are a distinctive feature of this firm's work.

The building is 2 and 3 storeys high and comprises two distinct halves, physically expressed by a recess on the Webber Street elevation. The front range, containing ground floor offices, first-floor former wardrobe workshops and second floor former paint studio, is separated from the rear block (containing double-height former scenery workshop and loading bay with boardroom) by a continuous 50-foot slot. The intermediate floors are set on cantilevers, and within this slot is positioned the vertically hoisted timber paint frame for scenery painting. The slot defines both the building's external form and interior planning.

The long canted front range rises to three storeys over basement, with a tall projecting lift tower and boiler chimney at either end. The ground and first floors contain 13 bays with a concrete grid inset with varnished Columbian pine window frames with strongly-expressed transoms. The same design language appears in the full-height glazed stairwell, which breaks through the brick-faced wall of the upper floors, and in the rear boardroom. Upper floors have clerestorey glazing under expressed floor and roof slabs. The entrance on the canted return to Webber Street has a cantilevered concrete canopy with timber and glazed doors. The loading bay and board room above are carried on 4 pilotis; this block is canted back from the frontage block, creating a wedge shape, with the end of the boardroom oversailing the ground floor. A Corbusian concrete fire escape is located to the rear of the boardroom. The rear elevation is of brick with concrete hopper heads projecting from the roof slab. An enclosed escape stair sits on the east elevation.

Inside, the entrance hall and stairwell feature a concrete open-tread staircase with canted risers and metal balustrade. The ground-floor offices have timber and glass screens to the corridor. The first-floor former wardrobe area is now open plan. The third-floor paint studio has large rooflights set between exposed slanted concrete beams. Along the rear wall runs the slot containing the mechanically operated timber paint frame. The rear boardroom has full-height timber panelling on the end wall, with the four exposed pilotis continuing up from ground floor. Other than some panelling in the former wardrobe area and boardroom, internal finishes are generally unplastered brick.

The Old Vic is one of the oldest surviving theatres in England, which under the auspices of Lilian Baylis played a pioneering role in bringing serious drama to a working-class audience. In 1963 it became the first home of the National Theatre Company under Sir Laurence Olivier. The Annexe was built to house scenery workshops, a painting studio for backcloth canvases, wardrobe stores, fitting and cutting room, and offices, which had previously been dispersed around London. The need for a specialised ancillary building was a product of the Old Vic's growth during and after the war and represented a wholly new building type which has never been repeated. The building is one of the earliest and purest examples of New Brutalism, emerging from Corbusian aesthetics of raw, expressed shuttered concrete and epitomising the New Brutalist aesthetic of exaggerated, dramatic shapes and honestly expressed materials. This idiom was perfectly suited to the building's workshop use, being directly expressive of its complex internal activities as "truthful" architecture with industrial connotations. Since 1984 it has been used as a "laboratory" for theatre performance research, comprising studio workshops, writers' studios and offices.