Three buildings have been named the best in Wales in the Royal Society of Architects awards 2021.
The sites include a former indoor market in Wrexham, a cancer centre in Cardiff and a sympathetically redeveloped cottage on Anglesey..
They were complimented by the judges for their skill on a budget.
READ MORE: Pregnant Welsh mum sets up business while isolated in hospital due to coronavirus rules
The RSAW Welsh Architecture Award winning projects are:
• Maggie’s Cardiff, Cardiff, Dow Jones Architect
• House in North Wales, Martin Edwards Architects
• Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham, Featherstone Young
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Regional Jury Chair, John Pardey said: “In their own ways, the three award-winning projects are excellent.
"All three architects went the extra mile to make great design on a budget that with skill, sensibility and inventiveness made the ordinary quite extraordinary. The three buildings clearly demonstrated how much can be achieved within limited means.”
Special Awards went to:
House in North Wales, Martin Edwards Architects: RSAW Small Project of the Year 2021.
RSAW Welsh Architecture Award winners will now be considered for a highly-coveted RIBA National Award in recognition of their architectural excellence, which will be announced on Thursday 9 September.
The three projects
House in North Wales
Architect practice: Martin Edwards
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Engineers: Datrys
Jury Report
A 19th century stone cottage situated on Anglesey with a superb view over Snowdonia. Formerly owned by Maurice Wilks, chief engineer at Rover and inventor of the Land Rover, it was updated in a utilitarian fashion in the 1950s and remained in the family until passing into the current owners’ family.
The brief was to create a new bedroom and bathroom and re-model the ground floor to facilitate wheelchair accessibility.
The architect Martin Edwards began by staying at the property for a week, imbibing upon the property, its environment and stunning landscape.
During this period, he visited the local builders’ merchant to understand the range of available materials, seeking to reflect in his solution a current vernacular but also, on a practical level, ensuring that materials could be easily transported down a narrow access track and construction delivered using local skills.
The extension in a former outbuilding is built using a highly insulated timber frame, and clad in corrugated sheeting.
The approach is not one that resulted in a full strip out and refurbishment, where possible it retains the past, only updating and upgrading where absolutely necessary.
This was a fundamental part of the brief that emerged, retaining the owner’s childhood memories of the cottage through re-use of familiar fittings and previous updates. Responding well in a truly inclusive manner to create an environment that is appropriate to all, it stimulates, engages and delights in equal measure.
As a result, the extension skilfully continues the story. There is a refreshing lack of homogeny to the finished project – in the windows, in the rainwater goods and so forth - although in truth, it feels more as a snapshot in time that will continue to evolve as required, rather than a completed work; a comma not a full stop.
It’s a project that wrings the very most of a simple brief and modest budget, showing how traditional rural buildings can be updated in an appropriate and light touch way whilst exhibiting a refreshing unpretentiousness and lack of ego from its architect .In less skilful hands it could have turned out quite differently and been far less successful.
Both client and architect – for it is surely the product of a meeting of minds and clarity of thought - are to be applauded for showing that existing buildings can be adapted to suit changing circumstances, without destroying their essence.
Ty Pawb
Architect practice: Featherstone Young
Contract value: £4m
Contractor: Wynne Construction
Structural Engineers: Civic Julian Broster
Environmental / M&E Engineers: Ingine Nick Walker
Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant: Stockdale Greg Franklin
Sustainability consultant: Hoare Lea Elliot
Jury Report
Formerly an unloved and under-used 1990s `post-modern’ market hall and multi-storey car park, the previously named People’s Market has been imaginatively and courageously re-purposed as a Lottery-funded community and arts venue whilst also retaining its former functions.
The architect, Sarah Featherstone of Featherstone Young became involved via a competitive procurement exercise following a feasibility study by Wrexham County Borough Council and others that determined the building choice and mixed-use brief.
The brief envisaged an arts facility with three traditional gallery spaces separated from the existing market stalls, an aspiration that raised local concerns of potential conflict between two seemingly unlikely bedfellows.
Recognising potential benefits that each could bring to the other, the architects began by successfully challenging the brief, proposing instead a single dedicated gallery space together with a series of looser, less defined spaces shared by both the market and art centre.
In consultation with the local authority, funders and the local community this looser approach - described by Featherstone Young as their ‘baggy space’ concept – was agreed. It’s a solution that allows flexibility in the use of space, providing a framework within which stalls, food outlets, exhibitions and programming of the arts operate.
This approach has proven fortuitous as the project has evolved and established itself; always likely given the brief’s ambitious original vision and necessary responses to the tightening of local government coffers.
Recent events have in particular shown the benefit of this approach and, following its inevitable Covid-induced closure during 2020, Ty Pawb has re-opened with some minor remodeling to respond and successfully adapt to the current restrictions.
The strength of this project undoubtedly lies in what it seeks to achieve through re-use and re-purposing of town centre building stock rather than the pursuit of an architectural statement.
Whilst there is a quality in the spaces created, the architecture serves as a backdrop and facilitator rather than pushing itself to the forefront. Materials are robust, austere almost -steel, concrete, ply, hanging plastic screens, exposed ductwork and services and functional.
Maggie's Cardiff
Architect practice: Dow Jones Architects
Client company name: Maggie's Cancer Care
Contractor company name: Knox and Wells
Structural Engineers: Momentum
Environmental / M&E Engineers: Mott MacDonald
Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant: RPA Cardiff
Project Management: Maggie's Landscape
Design: Cleve WestArt
Curation: Mike Tooby
Jury Report
Maggie’s Cardiff is the 19th completed Maggie’s Centre and adds to the pantheon of architects that have made these buildings a vital part of the contemporary British architectural scene.
The Velindre cancer care centre in the north-west suburb of Cardiff is the usual depressing hospital landscape, surrounded by a sea of parking.
But of course, the inhospitable medical setting was the very reason that the late Maggie Keswick Jencks set out to counter in providing a place where those having to face the diagnosis of cancer can find an oasis of hope and support. ‘If you look after the carers, the carers can really look after the patients –you create a virtuous circle’, said Charles Jencks.
The architects talk about the form reflecting the silhouette of the Welsh hills and the repetitive gables of Valley towns, and the colour referencing the region’s red sandstone or the autumnal colour of bracken on the nearby hills, or the industrial buildings of the Valleys.
The building adopts the roughly triangular site, leaving a strip of space to the rear and the trees so the resultant plan form is then given order by a serrated 45 degree pitched roofs that runs perpendicular to the rear wall. When the roof pitches meet the angled perimeter walls, the gable profile is formed by the meeting of the geometries to great effect.
The architects also infuse the building with art –including bollards originally from a scheme in Peckham by Antony Gormley that were recast and stand as rusty sentinels, guarding the public sides of the building.
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The building is about 25% smaller than most Maggie’s and less than half of the average cost –it seems that due to complex NHS land deals, a new Maggie’s will be built on the adjoining hospital site in the 2030s, so this beautiful little building will have to be repurposed. Iit would be perfect as a kindergarten. Infused with ideas of Welsh vernacular, art, and a deep concern for materiality, it creates truly restorative and poetic spaces as an antidote to the shadow of cancer.
This is a distinguished addition to the Maggie’s legacy. Through the architect’s skills, it benefits from the much-reduced budget and tight site.