Garsington Opera House
A temporary PVC motorised furling canopy roof for Garsington Opera, designed to provide shading in the daytime and protection at nightime for the opera goers.
Every year the grade one listed manor house at Garsington in Oxfordshire hosts the Garsington Opera festival. For the three weeks of the festival a temporary furling PVC roof cover is deployed in the garden to shelter the orchestra and the stalls. The canopy is supported by four masts and a cable net suspended adjacent to the house. At the push of a button the canopy can be unfurled from it's stowed position above the raised seating tier to provide cover to the stalls and the pit. By clever use of splayed cables and patterning of the fabric this ridge and valley style roof automatically induces tension to provide structural and dynamic stability as it reaches its fully deployed position.
The fabric of the roof is made of a bi-colour PVC with the upper surface being white to reflect sunlight and reduce the transmission of solar gain during day time performances. The underside is a dark blue to evoke the night sky for evening performances. Each year at the end of the season the entire edifice is dismantled and the fabric returned to Architen Landrell for cleaning, maintenance and storage.
