Theatres are challenging and interesting to design as they have specific and onerous functional and technical requirements, while their purpose is to reflect human expression. In a theatre, especially one full of children, there are inevitably ambiguities about what performance means. Keith Williams Architects has successfully played with this, from concept to concrete reality. This new theatre provides a permanent home for the previously nomadic Unicorn Children's Theatre Company. It fits well into a burgeoning thoroughfare of London's South Bank, on the corner of Tooley Street and the serendipitously named Unicorn Passage. The latter cuts a path to the Thames past Foster and Partners' crisp new commercial development, which is rapidly taking shape to the north. The Unicorn is a stand-alone building, like most of its sizeable neighbours, which make the Tower of London, framed in the distance, look like an out-of-scale toy.
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