A London Theatre Borrows Milan's Villa Necchi, Down to the Loos

The Guardian's art and design pages this week carry an unlikely Italian export: a theatre in Hackney Wick, in east London, built in the aftermath of the 2012 Olympics as a planks-and-plasterboard structure never intended to last, which has now reopened after a £4 million revamp. According to the paper, the redesign takes its cue from Milan — specifically from Villa Necchi — and the reference runs as far as the lavatories. The refit also brings heated seats, and Ian McKellen is due to appear there soon.

The Guardian frames the project against its surroundings. Since the 2012 Games, it notes, the skyline of Hackney Wick has bristled with cranes, and the new money has arrived with showier buildings attached; The Yard is presented as a low-budget house that outclasses its neighbours. That judgment is the paper's own, and it is the reason a Milanese interior enters an east London theatre story at all.

What interests this desk is what was borrowed and what was not. No Italian fittings were shipped over; Villa Necchi supplies a set of decisions — proportion, materials, colour — that can be cited from another country and another decade. Of Italy's cultural exports, design is the one that travels most cheaply, because it travels as reference rather than as object.