Open government

National Assembly for Wales

BUILDING SITE
Five choices of Britain's best new architecture

To mark Architecture Week, each day this week the Magazine will look at a notable building opened in Britain in the past 12 months and ask what makes them different.

"An open and democratic building, appropriate for the 21st Century." That was the design brief for a competition to create a building for the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff.

The building aims to be accessible and environmentally friendly

The winning idea, from the Richard Rogers Partnership, opened in March, with much critical acclaim for its attempt to physically embody values such as "transparency, openness and participation".

"A fine idea, executed with clarity, grace and ingenuity," said the Guardian's Jonathan Glancey.

"Rising on three levels from a great stepped slate plinth leading up from the water's edge, embracing the buildings and public spaces around it, and reaching through its crystal-clear interiors, the building is at once ultra-modern and classical."

Eco-friendly

As well as wanting to look accessible and open, the £67m building has an emphasis on environmental sustainability and reducing energy consumption.

The chamber is circular and intended to be less confrontational

This includes using natural ventilation in most parts of the building, using a rotating cowl system based on the traditional way hops were dried in an oast house. This device, which draws out heat from the building, is turned by windpower.

Rainwater is also collected and re-used and the building has a biomass boiler, fuelled by woodchip.

The design also maximises the available natural light, with a "lantern" structure on the roof which funnels daylight into the debating chamber.

Another part of the design requirement was to use as much Welsh material as possible, including timber, stone and slate, mined and cut at Blaenau Ffestiniog.

The architects' intention was to design a building that is "neither grandiloquent nor lacking in presence, closely in tune with the institution it houses" and which would be the "first major architectural landmark of 21st century Wales".

The building uses local slate and as much Welsh material as possible

The Financial Times agreed that this goal had been achieved with the Assembly building giving "a small nation a very fine, extremely accessible work of contemporary British architecture in the midst of a design desert".

However, there are always divided opinions and there have been pessimistic warnings about teething problems such as a leaking roof and cracks appearing in oak desks.

But Maureen Kelly Owen, a past president of Royal Society of Architects in Wales, rebuffed the sceptics: "You could build an unadventurous, cavity-wall building, totally unexciting and lacking in innovation, and you would get one that would never leak, and never move, but it would be so dead boring that architecture would never move on."

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Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

A fantastic landmark Welsh building which continues the excellent redevelopment of the previously derelict Cardiff (Tiger) Bay area. I have no doubt that the building will be far more elegant, and eloquent than the politicians who will occupy it! Fantastic value for money too, which at £67 pounds puts the ridiculous £500m Scottish parliament to shame!
Ian Jones, Port au Prince, Haiti (ex-Cardiff)

I still admire Edwardian and Victorian architecture. These 'boring' buildings are still standing in their magnificence whilst the 1970s eyesores are looking shabby and dated. More boring buildings please!
Neil J, Soton

Simply a magnificent, imaginative and beautifully executed glass box, which succeeds in all its design briefs. My kids loved it and loved going up and down in the glass lifts.
Ollie, Oxford

Not everybody would consider it 'eco friendly' to keep a building of that size heated and flood lit 365 days a year when the welsh assembly sit in it for only two afternoons a week, a few weeks a year. The first phase of another new building opened today in Cardiff as well; Wales' first children's hospital. Interestingly the hospital fund has been desperately trying to raise the £21m required to complete it for countless years from the general public (only reaching £7m so far) while the politicians didn't give a second thought to putting £67m of public money towards their ego trip, above the health of Welsh children.
Andy, Cardiff

The fact that the building was closed due to leaks in the roof a week after the official opening did seem ominous. I first saw the assembly building in person on a glorious May morning this year and all I thought was the roof that extends over the front of the building reminds me of a shop awning and I don't fancy its chances when gale force winds turn up in the autumn/winter.
LH, South Wales

Lovely, isn't it ?
W.Berry, Cambridge

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