Designing event and performance spaces
In our latest design research session, we explored a wide mix of event and performance venues from around the world. Each project sparked conversation around adaptability, identity, placemaking and user experience — with ideas and themes we see as valuable to bring into our own work.
Great venues open themselves to the public. At London’s Royal Albert Hall, the foyer doubles as a ‘third performance space,’ where everyday life becomes part of the theatre. It shows how cultural venues can extend their impact beyond performance, opening themselves to the city around them.
The MÉCA Cultural Centre in Bordeaux shows how modularity can enable flexibility. Its looped form and integrated public spaces allow the venue to host different users and events, blurring the line between civic and cultural life. Adaptability, in this sense, becomes part of the building’s identity.
In other cases, simplicity is the most powerful move. The UQ Sound Shell in Brisbane shows how a modest form, designed with care, can balance function with material expression — ageing gracefully while quietly enhancing its landscape.
Similarly, Singapore’s Esplanade Theatres demonstrate how a bold cladding system, born from public feedback, can create identity that feels both local and memorable.
At a much smaller scale, Angelfields in the Philippines shows that impact doesn’t always come from size. Through shade, softness and integration with the garden landscape, the venue feels generous, welcoming, and deeply grounded in nature.
Together, these projects remind us that performance spaces do more than hold events. They set the stage for collective experience — sometimes through iconic forms, sometimes through restraint, and often through the way they open themselves to the communities around them.
Every cultural space tells a story. Let’s keep asking how these venues can serve not just audiences, but the communities around them.