The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="560" caption="Nick Guttridge"]
[/caption]
Sat on the edge of Bute Park, in the shadow of Cardiff Castle (a gothic fantasy built for the 3rd Earl of Bute in 1873) is the home of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Founded in 1949, the school had a purpose-built facility erected in the Seventies on North Road, a major arterial route into the city centre. Over time it had become woefully inadequate and an ugly physical presence for the college, awarded its Royal Charter in 2002.
Following a competition in 2007 looking for designs to expand the school and modernise the facilities, the RWCMD appointed London-based architecture practice BFLS. The practice faced a client and city council that had reservations about cost and feasibility – an earlier scheme by John McAslan +?Partners had been shelved – and they were nervous about another false start. On top of this, the existing building had to remain open for students while the work was done. ‘We worked closely with the client and the planners, always working backwards from the total build cost of £22.5m,’ says Jason Flanagan, the ‘F’ of BFLS. ‘We won the competition with the design for the recital chamber and the theatre, then worked to sort out a shopping list of “must-haves” with the college.’ The brief evolved into a building that fits the bill as both a performing arts college and a performing arts centre. The doors are open to everyone.
The new building brings all the students on to one site for the first time (previously they had been scattered across Cardiff in ad-hoc accommodation), letting musicians, designers, singers and actors interact with each other in both structured and informal sessions. ‘We had lost our sense of community,’ says Hilary Boulding, RWCMD principal. ‘There is now a multiplicity to the arts activity at the school. We had a vision of how we wanted to take it forward beyond the confines of our old, anonymous building – we can now bring artists together at the peak of their training, and get the public involved.’ Key to this is the foyer space that links the 450-seat Dora Stoutzker Hall, the 180-seat Richard Burton Theatre and the original building. Flanked by huge glazed walls, the vast and airy space incorporates a cafe with rehearsal spaces above, and affords a great view of the beautiful park across the canal to the west. Even on a grey winter’s day the view is beguiling.
The finishes are simple and robust, the furniture functional, but the space is welcoming and bubbles with excited chatter and musical notes floating out of the rehearsal rooms high above. On Fridays the building regularly attracts good-sized crowds to informal jazz nights. ‘The students were dubious about having the public in the building all the time,’ says Boulding. ‘We convinced them that it was their building, and their public – it is a good thing that they are exposed in this way.’ From the foyer, the students pass through security gates and along a cavernous arcade with light cascading down from a clerestory three storeys above. The arcade is filled with work by theatre-design students and is the interface between the existing building, now painted white as a quick aesthetic fix, and the extension. The new theatre and recital hall are housed in two distinct drums, with entrances carved neatly out of their massive walls, peeling away to reveal stairways and balconies.
The recital hall, the only purpose-built chamber music hall in Wales, is a classic shoebox clad in birch plywood. It has been moulded to balance the primary and reflected sounds that fill the space during a performance, and the stage sits in a coffered basin, placed in the round by a balcony that wraps above it. ‘The details replicate what you would find in an 18th-century chamber room with pilasters, but without the fussy ornament,’ says Flanagan. ‘We knew the room should feel good and the audience and the orchestra should enjoy the space. It acts as an instrument, which the performer must learn to play.’ The proximity of the audience to the orchestra and the novel views from the balcony (see p10) ensure that, despite its size, the hall offers an intimate and intense experience.
