Design Commission for Wales

• Location: Caernarfon
• Date Completed: January 2005
• Client: Gwyn Roberts/Cwmni Tref Caernarfon
• Architect/designer: Richard Murphy Architects
• Planning authority: Gwynedd Council
• Funding body: Arts Council for Wales (Capital Lottery Grant), Welsh European Funding Office (ERDF Objective 1 Fund), Gwynedd County Council, The Welsh Development Agency and The Welsh National Assembly (Local Regeneration Fund)
• Contract value: £6,399,384/£2,674.21per square metre
• Project type: Creative Enterprise Centre
• Full address: Victoria Dock, Caernarfon, Gwynedd, LL55 1SQ
• Location type: Reclaimed ground on the waterfront of Caernarfon, facing the Menai Strait.

Images

Dockside Elevation

Foyer Stair

Interior Atrium Space

Interior of Theatre Space

Looking SE towards the Galeri over Victoria Dock

Looking SE towards the Galeri over Victoria Dock

Looking West from Balaclava Road

Looking West from Balaclava Road

Night View over Victoria Dock

Night View over Victoria Dock

Introduction

Galeri Caernarfon is a Creative Enterprise Centre conceived to assist, promote and forward a resurgence of the creative industries in North Wales, whilst providing a flexible, medium sized contemporary performance space for Caernarfon. The building is therefore a hybrid between theatre/rehearsal spaces and small offices aimed at young, creative companies. The essence of this idea was to create a building with continuous intensity of use by creative people: a home for business during the day and a theatre in the evening.

Galeri is located on The Victoria Dock, an area of reclaimed ground on the waterfront facing the Menai Straight originally constructed to service the extensive slate mining industry of the local area. Cleared of past industrial uses, the site was being used as a local authority car park before the construction of Galeri.

Design Process

At the heart of Galeri's design was the idea of communication between the different creative people working within the building and those visiting it. The potential for interaction between members of the public and people working in the various offices was of the greatest importance.

The design of Galeri is inspired by its location on the dock front. As such, the design team sought to create a warehouse-like structure of three parallel sheds. An inner shed containing the large volumes, requiring large span structures, flanked on either side by small or domestic scaled structural sheds of individual rooms. The inner shed contains the theatre at its east end and rehearsal rooms at its west end, with a central foyer providing circulation. This design not only forms the concept of a series of warehouses, but also ensures that as many of the offices as possible on the first and second floors have direct walkway access into the atrium space. This seeks to achieve the communicative objective by making office activity visible to everyone entering the building. The idea of these spaces is strengthened by the presence of the theatre and rehearsal rooms at either end of the inner shed.

The building exterior is largely formed of a steel frame and green oak boarding. This approach will form a natural weathered grey patina through the buildings lifetime and will further act as a rain screen to the building. The external walkways will be formed of galvanised steel, with lightweight perforated metal decks. The exterior wall, adjacent to the building entrance will be formed of board marked concrete. Windows are aluminium and the building interior is finished in striking colours to contrast with the monochrome exterior.

The building has two entrances, one on to the dock front and the other into the parking area facing the existing road. Although the building principally addresses the dock, the rear pedestrian access provides a clearly defined entrance through the use of high quality surface materials and street furniture. These furthermore dissipate the negative effect of the surface parking and gives easy accessible for all.

Evaluation

The scheme has been selected because:

• Through its thoughtful design, Galeri successfully achieves its objective of being an innovative cultural building for Caernarfon and the surrounding area
• Its use of high quality materials and strong links to the site's industrial heritage have created a striking but considered design
• The high quality design is let down slightly by its site planning. Although it has a robust relationship to the dock front, the rear entrance and public space is perhaps unnecessarily large and feels a bit'left over'. To some degree, this failing is mediated by the use of high quality surface materials.