We get asked to deliver complex projects regularly, but Quayside Studios is one of those jobs that sits in a category of its own. We are currently on site at the Coronation Building on Newcastle’s Quayside, carrying out a full refurbishment of a Grade II listed building to create a professional music production facility. The building will become home to Quayside Studios – a project backed by Live Theatre, Warner Music UK, and Generator, with SW6 One as the specialist studio contractor working alongside us.
At around £1.5 million and with completion targeted for summer 2026, it is a significant scheme. But what makes it interesting from our side is not the scale, it is the complexity of what is actually involved in getting it right.
What We Are Delivering
The brief covers the complete strip-out and internal reconfiguration of a multi-storey commercial building, creating a layout purpose-built for professional audio production. On completion, the building will house four recording studios, a live room, a photography and film studio, two podcast suites, and a multimedia and educational suite.
Beyond the studio spaces themselves, the scope includes replacing the glass facade to the rear elevation, forming new openings to accommodate the new layout, and an aesthetic uplift across the whole building. All of that has to be delivered within a protected structure, which means no alterations to the external windows, render, or main staircases. Everything we do has to work around those constraints from the outset.
The Listed Building Reality
Working inside a Grade II listed building changes how you approach almost every aspect of a project. Materials have to be moved through specific routes. Services have to be routed carefully to avoid affecting protected fabric. And because the building sits alongside residential properties, all works have to stay within standard site hours with noise and disruption managed throughout.
None of that is insurmountable – but it does require the kind of upfront planning and on-site coordination that separates contractors who have done this before from those who haven’t. We have delivered refurbishments at Tyneside Cinema and Alnwick Playhouse, both of which gave us a strong grounding in exactly these kinds of constraints. That experience feeds directly into how we are managing this job.
Our responsibility covers the building fabric, communal areas, infrastructure routing, and listed building compliance. SW6 One takes over within the studio environments, handling the acoustic design, technical fit-out, and specialist installations. Getting the handover points between those two scopes right is one of the more important coordination challenges on a project like this, and it is something we manage closely.
Building to an Acoustic Standard
One thing that stands out on this project is just how precise the acoustic performance requirements are. The studios are being built to achieve sound isolation ratings of 60 to 65 dB, with reverberation times dialled in for each individual room. The vocal booth, for example, is specified at 0.14 seconds, the live room at 0.27 seconds. Those are not figures you achieve by accident.
The construction methods that underpin that performance, decoupled wall and ceiling assemblies, floating floor systems, silenced HVAC with isolated fans, all have to be integrated into a building that has its own structural quirks and listed constraints. It is a good example of why specialist commercial construction experience matters on a project like this. You cannot approach it the same way you would a standard office refurbishment and expect the same results.
What This Kind of Project Means to Us
Delivering schemes within arts and cultural venues is something we have built genuine expertise in over the years. Tyneside Cinema, Alnwick Playhouse, Hard Rock Cafe – each of those projects taught us something about working in buildings that carry heritage weight and operational complexity in equal measure.
Quayside Studios adds to that body of work in a meaningful way. When it opens, it will give the North East a genuinely industry-standard music production facility, the kind of space that can attract professional artists and producers to the region and support the local creative sector at a higher level.
From our perspective, that is exactly the kind of outcome that makes a project worthwhile. If you are working on something with a similar level of complexity and want to talk through what delivery might look like, our commercial refurbishment and construction services are a good place to start – or get in touch with the team today.
