Britten-Pears Archive Building, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

The Britten-Pears Foundation have a considerable archive of manuscripts, film, and stage production material from the archive of Sir Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. At the moment the archive is stored in a number of buildings around Britten’s house in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and the objective of this project is to create a single building to house the complete archive in a secure environment. The design embodies the principles for archive storage set out in BS 5454, requiring the building to have a precisely controlled environment, high thermal mass, and four hour fire resistance. In addition the Foundation wish to create as sustainable solution as practical, given the long term nature of the project.

This scheme was developed during 2009, and comprised an inner core structure, housing the archive vault and ancillary spaces, that is then enclosed within an outer envelope. The space between the two elements is to be used as foyer and exhibition spaces, as well as creating an environmental buffer zone that reduces diurnal and seasonal temperature variations between the archive vault and the external ambient condition. Both elements are constructed with high thermal mass.

The outer envelope is to be constructed using load bearing masonry walls, supporting a brick vault structure. A complex series of non linear analysis exercises were carried out to optimise the shape of the vault, reducing bending forces to a minimum. The final proposal being a 330 millimetre thick steel reinforced brick arch, spanning 17.5 metres, which is a longer span than most cathedral vault structures.

Unfortunately the project was refused planning permission and so a revised scheme was subsequently developed, using a similar architectural programme, but with modified form See page on the 2011 Scheme.

Architect Stanton Williams Architects