So it's a busy time for Graham Haworth and Steve Tompkins, who have also designed everything from enlightened social housing (the £12m Iroko co-operative, close to the National Theatre on London's South Bank is one of the best such housing developments of recent years) to upmarket office buildings as far afield as Jersey and the Isle of Man. They have largely managed to avoid being typecast in their work. Even so, no respectable shortlist of architects for cash-strapped live theatre projects is these days complete without Tompkins. He's the one to beat.

What experimental actors and directors like these days is "found space", he says. A factory, a bus garage, a warehouse, whatever. In times gone by, theatre planners would put a supposedly flexible "black box" theatre alongside the main house - as the Cottesloe was shoehorned into the National. But, as he points out: "Found space is precisely NOT a black box". Although Tompkins knows all about this from putting temporary Almeidas into strange old buildings, he believes something of this risky feel can be designed into more conventional theatres as well.

"At the Royal Court, the whole building is a performance space. All the circulation and public spaces are capable of being programmed for a production - although this hasn't been fully exploited there yet. Increasingly, what you're doing is building possibilities into the theatre."

We've met in a bar on the South Bank, close to several of his ongoing projects, among them the Young Vic. Tompkins has great admiration for Bill Howell, the architect originally responsible both for the Young Vic and the auditorium at the Open Air Theatre. "Bill's view was: let's just build a provisional version and see what happens - maybe knock it down in three years' time and build something else. In that context, the architecture rightly becomes subversive. You don't get something with that slippery, corporate, Euro-feel." In fact the Young Vic, built on a shoestring and a temporary licence, is now 32 years old: long, long, overdue its refit.

With Daldry, Tompkins believes that the experience of theatre should be both magical and challenging. If necessary, even uncomfortable. "The only purpose of a theatre is to reinforce the relationship between audience and performer," he declares. "If a cramped foyer is part of that experience, then why not?"