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C O N T E X T 1 5 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8 41 BARRY McCORMACK, MITESH PATEL and RADU ENACHE Opening up at Covent Garden A project to open up the space below the Grade II listed glass facade of the former Floral Hall at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden involved a major exercise of structural engineering. Fifteen years after a major redevelopment of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, which included knitting the adjacent Floral Hall into the opera house building complex, a £35 million project upgrade has been completed that includes a major structural exercise to open up the area below the hall. The project is intended to enhance the experi- ence of the opera house visitors, staff and artists alike by opening up the space below the historic 16 metre-tall, Grade II listed glass facade along Bow Street, dating from the 1850s and currently known as the Paul Hamlyn Hall.The project has been designed by architects Stanton Williams, working with construction managers Rise and Robert Bird Group (RBG) providing the struc- tural engineering services. The Royal Opera House has a long and varied history with buildings for a variety of theatre uses going back several centuries. In more modern times a third theatre, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opened in 1858. This was a fireproof building in a regular classical design, and alongside it Barry built the Floral Hall in 1858–9.This was a glass and iron-framed structure intended to serve as a concert hall annexe and winter garden. The cast ironwork was manufactured by Henry Grissell’s Regent’s Canal Ironworks in north London and is dated (on the column bases) 1858. The theatre became the Royal Opera House in 1892. While the main theatre remained little altered after its construction, the roof of the Floral Hall had to be rebuilt after fire damage in 1956 which resulted in the loss of its lofty glass vaults and dome. In the mid-1990s the major redevelopment programme was embarked on under the architects Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones. As part of this the Floral Hall was taken down and put into store. The greater part of the main structure was subsequently re-erected in its original location on a new reinforced The load of the facade and retained lintel beam was supported via load cells through the brackets and posts to the flat jacks.