Grange Park Opera

Between 1967 and 1971 David Lloyd Jones, a recently qualified architect, teamed up with Harvey Goldsmith and Michael Alfandary to set up the UK’s first free rock concerts.  The line-up for the successive events included the fledgling Pink Floyd, Yes, Procul Harum and Fleetwood Mac.  They took place on Parliament Hill Fields and subsequently in the Round House.  Michael Alfandary went on to manage Genesis, Harvey Goldsmith became a famous rock impresario, and David continued his architectural career.

His projects increasingly focused on minimising environmental impacts and celebrating the munificence of mother nature.  He became a pioneer practitioner and expert in the field of sustainable architecture and design. In 2010 his practice won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise – Sustainability.

These weighty concerns did not entirely monopolise his time.  In Saudi Arabia he designed facilities for pilgrims going on the Hajj; he spent 2 years in Nigeria helping oversea the creation of 7 new universities distributed across the country; and at Garsington Manor he designed a retractable canopy for Leonard Ingrams to provide rain protection for performers, musicians, and the audience attending the opera festival.  Here, one afternoon in the manor house drawing room, he was introduced to a dripping wet Wasfi Kani.  She had just emerged from a cooling dip in the nearby ornamental lily pond.

When in 1998 Wasfi decided to set up her own country house festival David designed the first makeshift theatre at The Grange. He subsequently built a more a more substantial theatre inside the orangery.

In 2015 Wasfi appointed David to act as Consultant Architect on Phase 1 of the Theatre in Woods. He was architect on Phase 2 and went on to complete the opera house and add the adjacent Lavatorium Rotundum.  He was also commissioned by the Mary Roxburghe Trust to draw up plans for the renovation and repurposing of the manor house and outbuildings.

David continues to pursue the dual interests of performance space and bioclimatic architecture.  His projects include a Festival venue in Florence and a UK co-partnered primary school and professional designer venture addressing and re-imagining solutions to the pressing issues of the ongoing climate crises.