Viet Thanh Nguyen

Masterplanning. Urban Design. Architecture.

Camouflagic Studios for Creativity, RIBA Studio, Leamington Spa

October 2019

“We camouflage ourselves daily. We decide what clothes to wear, and what facial expressions to wear, to either become less or more visible, depending on the occasion or the mood. Sometimes we hide ourselves to escape predators, becoming caterpillars or stick insects, blending ourselves into the office meeting, or the party, or the family. Sometimes we disguise ourselves to become predators, like owls, or the orchid mantis” (Matt Black, poet). Same as in architecture when there were times that buildings had to take a subversive nature of camouflage.

Not many people who visit Royal Leamington Spa today would notice that at the very heart of the town was the main base of the Directorate of Camouflage as part of the Ministry of Home Security from 1939 to 1944. The Directorate brought together 250 artists, designers and technicians who worked in secret on aspects of military and civilian camouflage. They took over the Roller Rink that is now the Loft Theatre by River Leam and nearby sites to use as design studios. They would interact with local people and painted their daily life in their spare time. Many of them later became distinguished artists and designers of the mid-20th century, including Robin Darwin, Stephen Bone, Christopher Ironside, Leon Underwood and Colin Moss. Leamington was indeed the place where art, design, science, and industry came together.

The spa activities ended in the early 1990s when the Royal Pump Room was closed and converted into a library, gallery and museum. Right across River Leam, the block of Spencer Yard is currently home for the Loft Theatre and studios of Motion House and Heartbreak Productions. Many recreational and well-being activities remain and have evolved into modern forms.

Today, Leamington’s expanded area is home to international businesses such as Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, Calor Gas and Aga Rangemaster, and a growing young population including 6,000 students of the University of Warwick. Townwide, the Leamington Old Town area has become an aggregated hub for software and digital businesses, of which the gaming industry every year generates a significant amount of revenue for the UK. The Spencer Yard is part of the chosen area to become a new Creative Quarter, and there has been a plan to relocate the theatre to the nearby vacant United Reform Church.

So what awaits the Spencer Yard in the future? Can the camouflage legacy be revitalised and go from being inevitable to desirable? Is the idea of camouflage compatible with the demands for regeneration and recreation?

This project looked at the site of the Loft Theatre and possibly adjacent buildings as an experiment to test and explore the idea of disguise, deception and concealment in architecture, and investigate different ways to unlock the potentials to catalyse the wider area. The process took advantage of the area’s rich historic and artistic settings as a place where artistry met technicality, proposing a perspective about outside and inside, truth and lie, day and night, disappearance and emergence, old and new, enclosure and openness.