Project - The Ellen Terry Building

Situated in Coventry the former Gaumont Palace Theatre, a grade II listed building had been given a second life  to become the Ellen Terry building for Coventry University.

Kestrel Aluminium together with HTL Windows and Doors took on the project to give the building a fresh look and combine the historic style with the modern touch. Despite it being a challenging scheme, our team met all requirements and delivered the project on budget and within the anticipated timescales.

The Ellen Terry building has a ballroom, a stage of concerts with triple lighting changing the colour around the proscenium arch, an organ rising from the bottom of the orchestra and a restaurant above the art deco foyer.

The Challenge

As the building is a remembrance from the golden age of cinema the vital part was to create an elegant run of doors which matched the original façade using modern, thermally broken commercial entrance doors.
To ensure a high level of security for academic staff and students the central automated doors were required to be operated using card scanners and the end doors were fire escape doors.

The Solution

Kestrel thermally broken commercial doors were used to give low u values of 1.8w/m2k.
The Pas24 tested doors conformed to modern day building regulations but the slim sight lines were emulated using lay bars on the glass which matched the original façade above perfectly.

The Benefits

The use of the Kestrel Thermally Broken commercial doors has increased light into the lobby whilst providing high security and thermally efficiency to the lobby area.

The University commented “Your team have done an excellent job and we have received lots of positive feedback on how much lighter the internal foyer now is and how the new door design recaptures the buildings original design purpose as a cinema/theatre”