Marlow Film Studios

We are designing a new state-of-the-art film studio complex in Marlow that is set to be a new home for British film in Buckinghamshire. The plans were recently submitted for the 167,800 square metre production facility, known as Marlow Film Studios, that will transform a former extraction site into a leading global film production campus.

The new development looks to offer a model for the film industry that serves as a reference for future developments. The design of the buildings, energy use strategy, landscape and biodiversity, have all been designed with the ambition to provide a cutting-edge, sustainable film and high-end TV programmes.

Marlow Film Studios contains two film production clusters, made up of a mix of soundstages, workshops and offices, capable of forming self-contained units. Each unit will be big enough to take a blockbuster production for the duration of preparation, pre-production and shoot.  A central studio hub of distinctive design provides a focus for the site and houses screening rooms, exhibition space, café, restaurants and HQ office accommodation.

The production units consist of a range of single storey, large volume sound stages with the smaller, supporting workshops and offices strategically positioned around them to help screen the larger stages and reduce the perceived scale of the site. In a number of instances smaller sound stages have been joined to increase their efficiency and a special digital sound stage will house 270 degree curved digital screens.

Designed to complement the landscape, the soundstages will be different heights, and with careful use of the slope, to layer in the landscape. The proposed materials used are dark so that the buildings are visually recessive when seen from afar, and all soundstages will have green living roofs, with some having green walls.