The task now, he suggests, is to find a solution to the growing problem of what, exactly, a theatre should be. "We're post-black-box, but pre-the next orthodoxy. There is that dissonance," he reflects. "I wonder at what point theatre companies will stop being content with bits of scenery dropping from above, and actors rushing on from the sides."
Given all this, what about his latest job - redesigning the underground Theatre Museum in Covent Garden? Details are still secret - and by no means well advanced. But he admits it's going to be a tough one. "A museum of live experience is a very difficult thing to get your head round…how do you make a space that talks intelligently about the role of the theatre and also hints at the experience, in a way that appeals to everyone from children to the theatre establishment?"
As Tompkins hurries off - not to another job, this time, but to his own office Christmas party - he refers me to a key text by the late Michael Elliott, celebrated artistic director of Manchester's Royal Exchange theatre, who had sat uneasily on the building committee of the National Theatre. Live theatre is a shifting rainbow, Elliott pointed out, and a conventional theatre is a heavy, inert piece of real estate. They don't really belong together. "Isn't it time we stopped lumbering our grandchildren with our mistakes?" he wrote in 1973. "In future shouldn't we try to retain a certain lightness and sense of improvisation, and sometimes build in materials that do not require a bomb to move them? In short shouldn't we stop building for posterity?"
Tompkins leaves that one hanging in the air. The meaning is clear enough. His radical-theatre credentials are intact. He is an architect, but he is not necessarily building for posterity. Now 43, he's been a relatively short a time in the business and already two of his theatres, both for Almeida, have already come and gone. Elliott would have approved: you don't get much lighter, or more improvised, than that.
At the court of the found-space kings: www.haworthtompkins.com
Waiting in the wings: what's happening elsewhere in London's small-theatres boom.
Hampstead Theatre: a rare wholly new £16m small theatre, designed by Bennetts Associates right beside the concrete shack of its illustrious predecessor. Dramatic sloping zinc-clad wall of auditorium inside. It's much larger than the old place, but Rab Bennetts has kept the auditorium intimate and the seats close to the very flexible stage. There's even room at last to mill around in the intervals. Forms part of a big regeneration of the run-down Swiss Cottage area. Opens in February.
Laban Centre, Deptford: The progressive Laban centre, effectively a university of dance, has got itself the size of stage it needs in the theatre at the heart of its £25m building by Herzog and de Meuron, better known for Tate Modern. This will transform the public perception of Laban, and is already kickstarting a huge amount of development in this deprived quarter of south London. Opens in February.
The Roundhouse, Camden: long beloved of radical directors, the decaying old railway shed in North London finally starts its £25m refit in 2003, masterminded by architect John McAslan. As well as providing a permanent theatre and studios there for the first time, McAslan will graft on vital back-of stage and foyer space. Completion in 2005.
Hackney Empire: the former Frank Matcham music hall where everyone from Victoria Wood to Ralph Fiennes has played is nearing the end of its £15m refurbishment by Tim Ronalds. A mighty new flytower now soars into the sky. But the plush Edwardian ambience will remain. Reopens in the spring.
Unicorn Theatre for children, Tower Bridge: For the first time in its long life, the Unicorn is building its own permanent home, to a competition-winning design by Keith Williams. The £11.25m building is slated for completion in 2004 and will be a welcome relief to the acres of glass office blocks surrounding it.
