RIBA REGIONAL SHORTLIST FOR AUCKLAND CASTLE, TOWER AND FAITH MUSEUM
FEBRUARY 2024
The Auckland Projects Faith Museum, Castle and Tower has been shortlisted for a North East RIBA Award. The client, The Auckland Project was founded by philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer. The project is a series of urban and historic interventions: the restoration of the 900-year-old Grade I listed Castle, the Auckland Tower, a welcome and orientation building with ticket office and events hall; and the new extension to the Castle to accommodate the Faith Museum.
THE WELCOME BUILDING
SEPTEMBER 2017
The Welcome Building in Bishop Auckland consists of a new viewing tower and central ticketing hall for the The Auckland Project. It acts as an access point and gateway to the wider site whilst also giving views over the town and landscape setting. The tower – a timber framed structure – is now well under way on site.
The building team has worked tirelessly and with the highest level of precision, to build the in-situ concrete lift shaft. Working from the ground up seemed to take an age.
Meanwhile, the enormous larch glulam beams have been carefully crafted and manually grey-oiled in the joiner’s workshop.
The frames are now being lifted into position on site and suddenly the building can be seen. Almost in an instant. As if the past four years had happened in the blink of an eye.
We are so excited and proud – even – to see this fantasy project becoming real at last. But with completion on the horizon, time seems to now move all too fast.