The new broadcast centre and HQ for BBC Cymru Wales lies at the heart of the Capital Square redevelopment in the centre of Cardiff and is an exemplar, BREEAM outstanding building, setting new standards for innovative, flexible and cost-effective workplaces.
Designed by Foster+Partners, the new headquarters brings together a wide variety of studio, administration and support spaces in a single building, which is open to the city, highly flexible, energy efficient and provides a creative, collaborative and inspiring workplace for BBC staff.
Located opposite Cardiff Central Station, the project is situated on the site of the former bus station to create a dynamic media quarter around Capital Square, which is planned as a major new public space for the city.
“The building is designed to be open and welcoming – visitors can access the ground floor and look up through a full height atrium into the working spaces above, as well as into a new café facing the square,” explained a spokesperson for the architectural team, which was led by Toby Blunt and Adam Newburn.
“The design also establishes a sense of openness and transparency between different departments to create new opportunities for collaboration and interaction. The heart of the headquarters is a 4,000-square-metre ‘hub’, which extends across three linked levels and incorporates studios, offices and production facilities. The scheme includes a sheltered garden on the roof of the hub, which is connected to a restaurant and provides a unique venue for filming, as well as a valuable social amenity for staff.
"The project targets BREEAM ‘outstanding’
environmental accreditation with strategies
such as chilled beams, locally sourced
and recycled materials and an efficient envelope. Mechanical systems have been
carefully integrated to create a highly
flexible interior, which can anticipate and
respond to changing technologies.”
Foster+Partners was appointed to the
project in 2010 by the Rightacres Property
Company and the 30-metre high, 25,600m²
building was completed in 2019. Last year it
won both the Innovation in Design category
in the RICS Awards and was winner of
the Building Project of the Year title in the
Constructing Excellence Awards, Wales.
Two types of curtain walling, and entrance doors, by Kawneer, including the first use in the UK of a new severe duty welded door, feature on the award-winning building.
Kawneer’s AA®100 capped and zone drained aluminium curtain wall, complemented by its SSG (Structurally Silicone Glazed) and mullion-drained sister product, have been used throughout the glittering façade of the striking new headquarters building for BBC Cymru at Three Central Square.
They in turn are complemented by
thermally-superior AA®720 doors and the
new dual colour AA®190 TB severe duty
welded doors with class-leading thermal
performance that is so robust they are
offered with a lifetime guarantee.
The high-performance ceiling system for
BBC Wales’ new facility was designed
by Senior Architectural Systems in
partnership with Sheppard Robson.
Over 5000m2 of SAS International’s acoustic metal hybrid raft ceiling systems provide a distinctive aesthetic suited to a 21st century digital broadcast environment.
Hybrid metal acoustic rafts, made up of varying sized panels supported on a concealed grid with bespoke upstands, are suspended between the rows of chilled beams that supply cooling to the office floors. Light fittings in a distinctive cruciform arrangement are suspended beneath the ceiling.
The TV studios, with exceptional
acoustic requirements, are lined with SAS
International’s WP10 metal acoustic wall
panel system.