About

Lawson Field Theatre.

ArchiPro Project Summary - Revitalization of Lawson Field Theatre: A community asset transformed for the next 50 years, enhancing performance spaces while preserving its iconic rose-inspired design and ensuring regional vitality.

Title:: Lawson Field Theatre
Architect:: Architects44
Category:: Community/; Public and Cultural

Part of the beating-heart of Gisborne, this theatre is incredibly well-utilised. A community asset central to regional vitality now has a vibrant future.

This council-owned theatre offers performance space for local theatre groups, music and drama competitions, and fund-raising activities. The theatre had been unavailable for some time, as it required strengthening and had weather-tightness issues.

A strengthening scheme had been prepared but not enacted as it was very invasive and costly. With the help of our preferred structural engineer, we developed a less invasive scheme, which allowed the project to proceed.

The brief was to prepare the theatre for the next 50 years without making wholesale changes. We rationalised the external form as much as possible to remove leak risk junctions and treated the building as a single mass to help make sense of the overall form. Muted colour and material palettes were needed to sit alongside the neighbouring council building.

The front-of-house lacked any sense of arrival and was cramped and dark, so we reworked that area and carried out basic lifecycle replacement work on the back-of-house functionality.

The rose was a strong existing theme in the theatre; the theatre sits within the river-side city rose gardens, its function room is named the ‘Rose Room’, and the rose is synonymous with performance. We took the rose as inspiration and abstracted it based on the faceted nature of the building to create a significant and strong entry and building iconography. This flows from the new entry into the floors, walls, ceilings, and graphics.

The result was a project achieved ahead of time, under budget, and for a very happy client. A community asset that contributes to regional vitality now has a vibrant future.

Photography: Strike Photography

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Architects44Architects

Architects44

Architects

Gisborne

a44.co.nz

Architects44. We create spaces for people to be. We design buildings with courage, conviction and creativity. Architects 44 is an exuberant and dynamic architectural practice, with deep roots in Te Tairāwhiti. Our heritage goes back to the 1950s and we’re proud to have named our business for the physical space that our offices occupy, in a nod to our local heritage, to our place.Our practice is the largest and most diverse architecture practice in Tairāwhiti. We build on our strong foundation to continuously develop and challenge ourselves.Our team is experienced in delivering every type of project - from marae to monuments, from commercial buildings to churches, from rest homes to residential dwellings. We are well-equipped to deliver – from the largest commercial projects to the most intimate of residential renovations.We offer a comprehensive service, delivering an end-result that addresses all the functional and technical requirements of the project, as well as addressing the real needs of the building – cultural and human.