Welsh Dresser

The Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff is an accomplished public building and successful new arts venue dressed up with some folksy details

Architect:  Capita Symonds (formerly Percy Thomas Partnership) 2009

The Wales Millennium Centre at night (see below for more photos)

The architecture of the Wales Millennium Centre is ebullient, although, like any nationalist brand, prone to sentimentality.  Outside there is the overblown rhetoric of the verse super-graphic, in Welsh and English, with cladding formed from strips of dry stone walling in different coloured Welsh slates, while inside stairs and balconies are clad in timber bands from native species and haphazardly located black columns terminate in ornamental lanterns.  It is a relief not to find a Welsh dragon!  Although it is easy to take issue with the romantic approach, this should not be allowed to detract from the signal achievements of the building.  

The brief is complex, including  an auditorium suitable for opera that can also be used for touring musicals and other shows, two smaller performance spaces, but also administrative and rehearsal bases for Welsh National Opera, National Dance Company of Wales, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and several other youth and arts organizations.  Yet this building comfortably accommodates the colossal scale and complexity, presenting a comprehensible face to audiences as they arrive.  

Facing the open space of Roald Dahl Plass, formed from an infilled dock, and located sideways on to the bay, the Millennium Centre sits well on the site, establishing a strong connection with both the city and the powerful topography of Cardiff Bay. Belonging to a later generation than the cultural buildings of London's South Bank, the Centre integrates the food outlets and informal performance spaces expected from a contemporary arts complex.  Cafes open onto both the foyer and public external space, while the stepped plan allows views out and sideways to the Bay, creating a frontage which is both permeable and animated.  

Located with admirable directness, the main entrance for performances is under the cantilever of the larger auditorium.  Fussiness evident elsewhere is excised and the audience is greeted by an incredibly long straight steel counter for tickets and cloaks.  Interestingly, prior to performances programmes are sold from timber trolleys parked in front of the counter, obstructing the space and rendering the dominant counter redundant.

Technically accomplished, the auditorium has good sight-lines with an intimate relationship between audience and stage.  However, the pink faceted cladding, muddy carpet and strip timber detailing lack a coherent aesthetic character and are less successful than the exterior treatment.   For such a large building, the Centre has a surprisingly homespun quality:  are the pink, purple and grey chunky knit of the slate dry stone blocks and wany edged softwood cladding an invocation of the rural dimension of Welsh identity?  A strength of the building is the way in which your experience of the rich modelling and materials change as you move around it in different weathers and lights.  The cut out letters of the super-graphic are glazed, with words formed from different coloured glass; they allow views in and out, a sculpturally precise relief in the main foyer bar and a striking effect when the letters shine out at night.   

As an assertion of power and identity, the application of writing on the building may be closer in character to ancient Roman, rather than Constructivist practice, but the glazing and illumination of the letters injects a populist note akin to the signage on a cinema.  The text cleverly interlocks Welsh and English verse: 'creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration' (in Welsh) 'in these stones horizons sing' (in English).  The Wales Millennium Centre is an accomplished building that is clearly enjoyed by a wide audience and well worth a visit, especially if Bryn Terfel is singing!