Palais de Danse
St Ives, Cornwall
Refurbishment and extension of a Grade 2 listed building to open up Barbara Hepworth’s former workshops and provide new community, exhibition and making spaces
Barnoon Hill, 1930-1940, St Ives Archives
Palais de Danse Ad in St Ives and District Guide, 1952, St Ives Archives
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1/2Hepworth with the plaster model of "Single Form (Memorial)", 1962. © Bowness
Barbara Hepworth in the Dance Hall, Michael Ochs Archives
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- Palais de Danse, St Ives, Cornwall
- Client: Tate
- Duration: 2023 – 2026
- Status: In Progress
The Palais de Danse is a former cinema, dance hall and workshop in the centre of St Ives, which was used as a studio by Barbara Hepworth in the 1960s. After 50 years of dances, the Palais de Danse was purchased by Hepworth to expand the scale of her sculptures. Here she made large scale armatures and maquettes for major works such as Winged Figure, now on Oxford Street, London, and Single Form at the UN Headquarters in New York. The Palais sits on the harbour facing hill, with cave like workshop spaces, to reopen as part of the Barbara Hepworth Museum, and above the 20m long maple sprung dance floor and adjacent small hall, to become new learning, performing and gathering spaces. Working with the St Ives roofscape, an attic extension provides level access to the dancehall’s balcony and former projection rooms and new public spaces with views out to the sea. These new rooms have a folded zinc room – a new set of dormers in the townscape.
AKA Design Team: Architectural Thread, Charcoal Blue, Daisy Froud, Price & Myers, Ritchie+Daffin
Lower workshop, Hepworth's former studio, to be opened to the public for the first time
Workshop taking place in the new sculpture yard
