BBC Cymru Wales has taken possession of its new headquarters in Cardiff. Commissioned by Rightacres Property, the €114.5m (£100m) building at the site of the former bus station, had been designed by Foster + Partners, is adjacent to Cardiff Central train station and will be home to some 1200 staff.
The building is part of Central Square, a development that will include 92,903 sqm of office, residential and retail space.
Designed to be open and welcoming, visitors enter via a full-height atrium with views up to the working spaces above, as well as into a new café facing the square. The design also establishes a sense of openness and transparency between different departments to create new opportunities for collaboration and interaction. The heart of the headquarters is a 4,000-square-metre ‘hub’, which extends across three linked levels and incorporates studios, offices and production facilities. The scheme includes a sheltered garden on the roof of the hub, which is connected to a restaurant and provides a unique venue for filming, as well as a valuable social amenity for staff.
The building is part of Central Square, a development that will include 92,903 sqm of office, residential and retail space.
Designed to be open and welcoming, visitors enter via a full-height atrium with views up to the working spaces above, as well as into a new café facing the square. The design also establishes a sense of openness and transparency between different departments to create new opportunities for collaboration and interaction. The heart of the headquarters is a 4,000-square-metre ‘hub’, which extends across three linked levels and incorporates studios, offices and production facilities. The scheme includes a sheltered garden on the roof of the hub, which is connected to a restaurant and provides a unique venue for filming, as well as a valuable social amenity for staff.
“Working on this project has been a truly collaborative effort. The design of the building is inspired by its unique location and the institutional heritage of the BBC, to create a distinctive icon that the people of Cardiff can be proud of. A progressive, state-of-the-art workplace for the BBC, it also forms the central focus for the regeneration of this urban quarter, and we look forward to its full opening next year,” said Gerard Evenden, Head of Studio, Foster + Partners.
The project targets BREEAM ‘outstanding’ environmental accreditation with strategies such as chilled beams, locally sourced and recycled materials and an efficient envelope. Mechanical systems have been carefully integrated to create a highly flexible interior, which can anticipate and respond to changing technologies.
Installing broadcast technology will take 18 months and the first staff are likely to move in by the end of 2019.
“To hand a building over of this scale and complexity exactly on time and budget is a real achievement. We signed the agreement for lease back in December 2014 and the predicted handover date was today – it has been a fantastic effort by all parties and we now look forward to completing the fit-out ready for occupation next year," said Alan Bainbridge BBC Director of Property.
Foster + Partners also produced the master plan for Central Square, a 1.5 million sq ft mixed use regeneration scheme and also designed Two Central Square which is currently under construction. The whole building has been pre-let to Hugh James Solicitors and Cardiff University’s School of Journalism.
