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.

MICHAEL WEBB WRITES A FEATURE ON NIALL MCLAUGHLIN IN MARK MAGAZINE

OCTOBER 2013

Under the title ‘London Maverick’ Mark Magazine has profiled Niall McLaughlin and a wide ranging showcase of the practice’s work. The article includes projects from the Bandstand at Bexhill-on-Sea in 2001 to the Chapel for Ripon Theological College completed last year, the latter being described as a project that “restores one’s faith in the capacity of architects to reinvent traditional forms.”

The work of the practice is described as defying categorisation and characterised by “poetry and invention”. Drawing on the broad theme of materiality, the review reflects on the design process for a selection of projects including House at Goleen, the student accommodation for Somerville College, the Information Centre in Hull and the Housing for the London Olympics.