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THE WELCOME BUILDING

SEPTEMBER 2017

The Welcome Building

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.

GOLD AWARD WINNER AT WOOD AWARDS 2013

NOVEMBER 2013

Gold Award Winner at Wood Awards 2013

The Bishop Edward King Chapel has been named as the Gold Award winner at this year’s Wood Awards. The project was selected as overall winner from among over 300 entries and was also announced as the recipient of the prize for the  structural category.

The chairman of the judges described the chapel as “a stunning and worthy Gold Award winner.” He went on to say that the project “…embodies the Wood Awards’ celebration of excellence in design and craftsmanship in wood, and even exceeds the hope that the building might be a ‘work of art that would touch the spirit’.”