Hertford’s bold new cultural hub ‘BEAM’ completes

We worked alongside architects Bennetts Associates to transform and extend Hertford Theatre, providing MEP engineering and sustainability consultancy for the arts venue, which is now fossil fuel-free. The newly renamed BEAM cultural hub will also provide an all-day café/bar and events spaces for community use. 

The project grew out of East Herts District Council’s recognition that culture is a vital contributor to the future prosperity and wellbeing of local people. 

BEAM incorporates the shell of the old theatre and its stage and backstage areas, but adds significant new spaces for the cinemas, studio, and café/bar spaces in a series of brick-clad volumes. These new spaces enclose a covered triangular courtyard space, which forms the main foyer. The main theatre was transformed from a 400-seat flat-floor room with a large retractable seating unit, into a 547-seat auditorium with a shallow-raked stalls, a balcony and a fully accessible technical grid. A second theatre space is due to open in 2025. 

The design seeks to reduce embodied carbon and was the subject of a whole-building carbon assessment during the design stage. Aside from elements of re-used structure from the old theatre, the building makes extensive use of mass timber in the superstructure, with pre-fabricated cross-laminated timber panels forming the main walls and pitched roofs of the new cinemas and second theatre space.

Iain Shaw, Director, MEP Engineering, said: "This compact venue conceals the wide range of quality entertainment facilities more typically found in the West End and on Broadway. To incorporate the services within the tight envelope has been an interesting challenge. This should not be evident to the public, whether they visit the building to enjoy theatre, film or the varied community facilities. 

"A big part of the project aim was to decarbonise. The fossil fuel-hungry gas boilers and gas connection were removed to make way for an electric-based heating system, and the ventilation systems now employ heat and coolth recovery for increased efficiency. This work was part of a team wide decarbonisation approach in both embodied and operational carbon."