The Welcome Building

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.

TAMSIN HANKE WRITES ARTICLE ON RUSSIA FOR THE ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW

FEBRUARY 2014

Tamsin Hanke, member of the practice and recent winner of the Dissertation Medal at this year’s RIBA President’s Medal Student Awards, has written an article for the Architectural Review, commenting on the current political and urban landscape in Russia. Under the title ‘Don’t get Distracted: Russia under the Spotlight’, the piece gives context to the built fabric of the country, explaining its links to rapid industrialisation during at the first part of the 20th century. The article calls for an understanding of the complexities of contemporary Russia beyond recent attention grabbing headlines and stresses the need for new urban methods to solve the historic contradiction between policy and infrastructure.

To read the full article click here