The Stanislavsky family established the site in the early 20th century and it was, for a time, the commercial and cultural headquarters of Konstantin Stanislavsky the son of the original factory owners and theatre impressario. The brief called for a regeneration plan in which the history of the site remained evident. This demanded a mixture of restoration, repair, and reprogramming for six buildings and newbuild apartments. The client wanted to retain and re-use existing buildings as offices, a restaurant, and hotel. A key part of the brief was the revival of the physically degraded theatre in the form of a premier arts centre.

 

JMP established a masterplan for services, parking, landscaping, and public and private access. JMP’s landscape design added a vital coherency to an ensemble of buildings and spaces that lacked the order of a gridded plan; no two buildings were parallel, for example. The internal garden scheme created refreshing focal-points in a coolly graphic paving and planting scheme that has not only added colour and texture at key points, but brought a return of birds, bees and other insects to the heart of the Stanislavsky Factory.

 

Programming over a four-year period from 2006–10 required JMP to develop the masterplan in parallel with a phased construction programme.