EASTGATE THEATRE 20th ANNIVERSARY LECTURE
Tuesday, 3rd September 2024 at 7:30pm
Eastgate Theatre, Peebles
From church to arts centre; the Eastgate story
Richard Murphy OBE, BA (Hons), Dip Arch, RSA, RIBA, FRIAS, RIAI, FRSE, FRSA
Director, Richard Murphy Architects Ltd.
2024 marks 20 years since the Eastgate Theatre first opened its doors.
As its contribution to the celebrations, the Tweeddale Society is proud to present a special lecture by Richard Murphy, the architect charged with transforming the former Free Church building into the modern theatre that has been the cultural heart of Peebles for two decades.
In Richard’s own words,
“The re-use of a church for another purpose is not uncommon. Architecturally however it is always something of a conundrum, since the architecture of a church always says ‘church’.
“Signage is a rather lame solution; more fundamentally, can we change the architectural rhetoric to communicate the new function?”
Richard Murphy was educated at Newcastle and Edinburgh Universities and later taught at Edinburgh University. He founded Richard Murphy Architects in Edinburgh in 1991 and since its inception the practice has won twenty-eight RIBA or RIAI Awards, has twice been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize and once for the RIBA Lubetkin Award. In 2017 it won the RIAS Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award for its Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries.
The practice’s work is wide ranging and covers most sectors; it has built in all four countries of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Malta, Macedonia and Sri Lanka.
Two monographs have been published on the practice’s own work and the practice has been the subject of exhibitions in Edinburgh, London, Denmark and the USA as well as exhibiting in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2004.
In 2006 Richard was voted “Scottish Architect of the Year” by readers of Prospect Magazine and in the Queen’s Honours List 2007, he was awarded an OBE.
Richard is also an acknowledged authority on the Italian Architect Carlo Scarpa and has written monographs on the Castelvecchio in Verona and the Querini Stampalia in Venice as well as presenting a film for Channel 4 directed by Murray Grigor. A revised and much expanded second edition of the Castelvecchio monograph was published at the end of 2017. It was described by Professor Robert McCarter as “a masterpiece.” A second edition was published in 2021 and an Italian language edition was published in 2023.
