Theatre comes home: a fine '20s steel building retains its original spirit, while generating a new and urbane theatre complex.

The company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, now in existence for 18 years, is one of the best known alternative theatre operations in Germany. For more than ten years, they held their avant-garde productions in a former factory in the suburb of Wangen, where they created performance spaces that could seat 200 and 400, but they always found themselves running to the limit of their budget, so needed larger premises, more facilities. Meanwhile, the city authorities were wondering what to do with another industrial area of the city, Pragsattel. In the course of setting up a prestigious international competition for a masterplan in 1992, they noticed a significant factory building designed by Emil Fahrenkamp in 1923. It had been the regional depot for Thyssen's steel operation, a storage house for redistribution of steel sections and components, though by the 1990s it was in poor condition with holes in the roof, reduced to a holding centre for asylum-seekers living in containers. The monumental east elevation remained, however, along with the less important north wall and an elegant steel skeleton. Listing it as a historic monument, the city sought an opportunity for reuse, but some large-scale function was needed to take advantage of the spans, respect the scale, and avoid a numbing subdivision.

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Director of Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Werner Schretzmeier asked Peter Hubner for a feasibility study on converting the building, and there followed some five years of exploration and development. State funds were available because of the listing, but conversion had to meet with the approval of the heritage authorities. And the important steel structure could only be left exposed by arguing for a relaxation of the fire regulations. Since the building was so large, further uses had to be found beyond the alternative theatre group, so a home was added for 'Music of the Centuries' along with facilities for sports.

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A crucial earning function is the staging of pop concerts, which had to be accommodated as well. A foundation was set up, and funds put together for a relatively economical development, the initial works involving a work-creation scheme for the unemployed. The theatre company hoped to save money by reusing its existing technical equipment, but in the event all had to be renewed, and more funding had to be found. In the end, though, a remarkably cheap building was achieved in terms of square metreage, but only through some very careful project management.

Typical of its period, Fahrenkamp's Rheinstahl-Werk consisted of a great toplit shed for steel-handling linked to a more domestic-looking side wing of offices, all in tough, naked brickwork. The shed had a central wide span and two side aisles, an order strongly expressed in the end facade, the centre being marked with seven huge vertical windows and the aisles with pairs of wide sunken arches, each sitting on a stone string-course. These details set a cyclopean scale. Internally, the central span peaked on rounded trusses. These were supported by deep lattice beams and rows of columns running back into the plan. Lower sloping roofs covered the side aisles, borne on the edge by brick outer walls. By the time of conversion only two of the original four walls remained, and Hubner chose to accommodate his new programme by relocating his new walls further out in plan, absorbing bands of daylit accommodation on the south and west sides.

The theatre director called for black boxes of various sizes with linear removable seating, and this extreme flexibility was also required for other functions, such as pop concerts. The largest performance space, seating up to 1050, found appropriate place on the central axis behind the seven vertical windows of the monumental facade. This left space for another room of the same width at the opposite end behind the west facade, this time daylit and usable as a sports hall. This light 'white box' contrasts with the black ones, toplit and beautifully decorated with fritted glass panels left over from the Finnish Pavilion at the Hanover Expo. The main approach is from the street on the north side, where a low outer wing and a narrow court belonging to the old factory complex now serve as a cafe and beer garden. It made best sense to enter in the north-western corner, using the northern aisle as foyer. A glass wall opens the end of the space completely at the west end, interrupted only by a suspended container which projects through the glass as a publicity device. The new foyer connects directly with the side court and cafe through the old north factory wall, whose scale is set by tall narrow windows.

Within the foyer, the original roof structure remains, and also the original rails for travelling cranes. This is in the end the most visibly industrial space and the point of most dramatic collision between new and old. The temptation to purify the old steelwork has been resisted and it retains some of its patina, the paint peeling in places. The new roof cladding above is grey and industrial, relieved by rooflights that also recall the idea of factory. After passing through a ticket hall and bar, the foyer rises in a great flight of steps to meet the upper end of the raked seating in the main theatre and to give access to the raised halls beyond. This allowed a small performance space, Hall 4 seating 150, to be slipped under the floor beyond the steps. Medium-sized halls 2 and 3, seating 450 and 350 respectively, were placed on the other side of the building in what had been the southern aisle, reached by a pedestrian cross-street running between the largest halls.

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The south side overlooks a car park, becoming the back and the ideal place for service and performers to enter. Treated externally as a new building, it is efficiently modern, cubic and white. Linear bands of offices and dressing rooms occupy upper levels, and a couple of performance rooms for the music group cantilever forward from the top floor. In what seems an echo of the industrial past, the facade ends to east with a great red chimney, but there was originally no such element. It is an entirely modern stack for the passive ventilation system, which draws air in through cooled cellars and lets it rise through the performance spaces and into the stack to escape, circulating by sheer convection. Optional fan assistance is on hand, but the intention is to maintain internal climate by passive means as much as possible. This reflects the continuing ecological commitment of Hubner's office.

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With its complete negation of the conventions of plush and gilt, the industrial atmosphere has proved ideal for fringe theatre, combining attributes of workshop with the romanticism of decay and memory of industry. The rawness of the venue and its collage-like collision of styles breed an atmosphere of expectation and possibility, of the unfinished which adds to the genuine flexibility and absence of character of the black boxes. At the same time, something has been kept of the original flavour of the industrial suburb, built on virgin land at the time of Stuttgart's first great expansion. Disused factories and warehouses are hard to keep, for they are large, occupying valuable land, and are usually in poor condition after industry has run its course. The result is that industrial cities lose almost all the buildings that gave them their character and raison d'etre, and wholesale redevelopments wipe out even the street pattern. We just get new business parks surrounded by seas of cars and a trim of polite landscaping just like anywhere else. It looked at the time of the Pragsattel competition (whose judging panel I joined as official observer) as though the same thing would happen there, for international architects jostled to impose their visions. Although James Stirling, characteristically, argued for the most savagely monumental proposal, the 'softs' on the jury prevailed (memorably Fuksas and Epstein), and the prize went in the end to Steidle of Munich for a gentler open-ended and flexible strategy. Rebuilding has been far slower than expected, and it is a joy to discover a dozen years later that this central industrial object has not only survived to keep the memory of the place, but can also offer the new development, when it is fulfilled, a real social centre.

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