Paisley Town Hall

The project brief was not a dry list of deliverables. It was a vision:
The client wished to transform this historic building into one of the finest multi-functional venues in the West of Scotland. The project was to be a civic hub serving the people of Paisley, centred on its Main Hall. Other entirely new functions desired included a Dance Studio, Interval Bar / Café, Wedding Reception, Banqueting, Digital Screening Room and Commercial Catering.

By combining a wide variety of local amenities, the aim was to promote footfall in the town centre and to engage and regenerate the area.

Other key aims were to radically improve accessibility, focused on providing a welcoming building which was genuinely approachable for every single member of the community.

Also from a technical perspective, the brief required a dramatic reworking of the Main Hall auditorium. This space performed poorly and needed significant, yet sensitive, intervention to redesign the seating, stage, acoustics, and audience experience.

In the Main Auditorium, we entirely rebuilt the stage with cutting edge rise-and-fall elevator functionality. The seating balconies were likewise drastically rebuilt, increasing the audience capacity to 1200. Each seat was meticulously checked in 3D to ensure excellent views. The ground floor seating was replaced with a moving retractable system, meaning that the space is genuinely multi-functional. We pushed boundaries to cram in a huge amount of new technology while keeping these interventions harmonious or hidden.

In terms of improving accessibility; we worked hard to unlock the potential and are particularly proud that we transformed this Victorian layout from only about 20% wheelchair accessible to one which was close to 80%.

Each function requested in the aspirational brief was delivered to client delight.

We greatly appreciated the trust placed in us as custodians of this Grade-A listed property and as such we were rigorous about each proposal made. Our conservation methodology was to painstakingly analyse the details of the existing building and to only propose interventions which met a standard of quality, integrity and richness which would suit this grand building.

We also targeted sustainability improvements throughout. We entirely replaced the building heating and ventilation systems with a tempered air being fed through concealed ducts hidden beneath the timber floors. Destratification fans are used to recycle warm air and efficient CHP boilers were installed. The facility was built to plug into a planned district heating network saving future energy use.