The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama will be celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the new building this year.

In April 2011 the first public event was The Transformation and Revelation exhibition, presented by the Society of British Theatre Designers. It was held in the Linbury Gallery and on the stage of the Burton Theatre whilst the construction works were still completing prior to the building‘s full opening later in the Summer.

The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama is Wales’ national music and drama conservatoire. Wrapping an existing building with a striking new façade, the college has been transformed and modernized. Won in international competition in 2007, the project created an acoustically excellent 450 seat chamber concert hall, a 160 seat courtyard theatre, along with studio, teaching, rehearsal and foyer spaces.

Our approach was two-fold; to design the internal performance spaces from the ‘inside out’, looking at their acoustic and theatrical functionality as major drivers; whilst in parallel designing from the ‘outside in’, thinking about the civic presence of the building in its urban context. The new buildings are situated inside the Grade I listed Bute Park, where they directly face Cathays Park, the civic centre of Cardiff which consists of a number of important listed buildings.

The project was funded by the Welsh Assembly and designed to be BREEAM ‘excellent’.

Read more about The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.