B3 Designers, have given Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre a fresh look ahead of the 2015 season, with the redesign of their Summer Café, main bar and the new Interval Café.
The award-winning Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is a London landmark, a firm fixture of summer in the city with its origins dating back to 1932, providing a cultural hub, where the likes of Ralph Fiennes and Dame Eileen Atkins made their professional debut in the beautiful surroundings of a Royal Park. B3 Designers’ brief was to assess and address the function and impact of this existing outdoor theatre space and rework the existing bar and café offerings to maximise service and the overall theatre experience for guests.
With 83 years of theatre in the park, making Regent’s Park Theatre the oldest, professional, permanent outdoor theatre in Britain, B3 Designers have aimed to preserve the comfortable offering of the existing space that sits within the natural park surroundings.
In keeping with the casual language of the space, B3 Designers have kept materials raw and organic with down-to-earth furniture choices. Key design features in the revived hospitality areas bring a new level of theatre experience to the guests, the impactful and atmospheric lighting scheme and polished concrete bar tops with reclaimed scaffold board cladding sit alongside reclaimed timber with expanded metal and mild steel used for finer details. In the Summer Café, menus are hanging off rails for better view, fresh produce is displayed in a UV bonded glass display box on top of the counter and food offerings are displayed on oak timber boards varying in height.
In the main bar, B3 Designers have explored the layout to maximise the queuing system and ensure visitors can view menus and promotions clearly. Wine is displayed in mild steel and mesh shelves on the back wall behind the bar.
The curved counter concrete bar sits on natural wood cladding and follows the shape of the auditorium, elongating the access points for the visitors. Bar ledge seating surrounds the main bar area with bucket hook detail to keep the drinks cool. More theatrical lighting, promotion boards and pendant lighting is present in the new Interval Café to add further presence and drama to the area. “Working on a project like the Regents Open Air Theatre presented a rare opportunity to design a F&B space in an important cultural landmark, within such a beautiful natural setting. Its exciting to think about the vast number of visitors who will experience the F&B offers while attending the productions this Summer.” says Mark Bithrey, Design Director at B3 Designers.
The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s steeply raked auditorium is one of the largest in London with 1,256 seats, yet those who attend say it is one of the most intimate. Over 140,000 people attend productions between May and September. This year will be showing J.M. Barrie’s Peter (recommended ages 9+), The Seagull, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
