Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and Foyers, Shakespeare's Globe

The internationally acclaimed Shakespeare's Globe was decades in the making, the vision of American actor Sam Wanamaker and architect Theo Crosby. Finally realised in 1997, the open-air 360-egree theatre occupies a site on London's South Bank between a row of historic houses, just metres from the original and long since vanished Shakespearean theatre on which it was modelled.

When it opened under Mark Rylance's leadership, the Globe Theatre quickly became an inspirational new focus of the London theatre scene, historic in its design yet progressive, experimental, even radical in its productions.

It was always the intention that a Jacobean indoor theatre would be part of the complex. Delivering the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse within the brick shell built for its purpose but never completed, provided the organisation with the ability to perform plays all year round for the first time, with summer seasons in the Globe and winter seasons in the Playhouse.

Like the Globe Theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse takes a historic form as the starting point for the creation of an intriguing space for live performance. An informed reconstruction of a 17th century indoor theatre, the playhouse was designed and built to an historic example, a set of plans found at Worcester College Oxford thought to have been drawn in the late 1660's by John Webb, Inigo Jone's former assistant.

The project creates a 340-seat thrust theatre with a two-tiered oak balcony structure, a flexible seating/standing pit, a musicians' gallery, stage with traps above and below and a highly decorated 'frons scenae' (back wall of the stage). It is not a reconstruction of a specific theatre but echoes the Blackfriars Playhouse, a space used by Shakespeare's company from 1609.

The new playhouse with its a polygonal horseshoe seating formation that embraces the stage, providing an intimate and intense theatre experience with the audience and performers almost within touching distance. The company can explore how plays change with the transition from the outdoor Elizabethan Globe to the indoor Jacobean playhouse, and stage plays such as the Tempest, once performed in spaces like this one, with all the magical transformative effect that candle lighting delivers for a contemporary audience.

As for the foyers, an entirely new space, experience and character have been created without the expense or disruption of a complete rebuild. A new cafe bar, much improved visitor services (box office, information desk etc), and improved access to the shop, the Swan and the two theatres has been created.

The Shakespeare's Globe complex is a key element of the string of cultural buildings that line the south bank of the River Thames today. This considerable development in how the organisation operates has ensured that it continues to thrive as a centre for culture with much improved facilities for visitors. Further opportunities have since been identified to secure the centre's future. We have recently obtained planning approval for a new building on the site's western edge to house a library, archive and research centre, along with new production facilities.