Architecture Year 3 

Unit 1 - Hay and District Social Club

The Borderland Civic Centre

From the initial research undertaken into the Borderland I proposed reshaping the political area around Hay and Cusop through the creation of a Borderland council which merged Hay town council and Cusop parish council which would operate within a larger civic centre involving an information centre with an exhibit space and a library to educate people on the Borderland but also world borders. Therefore, the spaces needed to do this would be a large assembly space, council offices and a library and cultural centre with exhibit space shared by both with the building bleeding programmatically.

Finding a site for this building, I returned to my initial area of interest and this platform overlooking the border which contains the vacant lion street mot garage with the Hay Festival offices and an existing terrace of houses and retail units behind this. It has views of the border over the east and its vantage point allows for views over the Borderland as seen below.

I became interested in the working building of the garage and the format of the existing structure, which was formed of trusses and columns to create an uninterrupted work space with two balconies overlooking the central workspace. This felt like the format of an assembly space with these becoming public galleries overlooking the shared assembly space.

I proposed a hypothetical relocation of the existing A1 electric shop on the end terrace and the existing outbuildings related to it. If this was for sale these would become available to be used and this opened up the site and allowed the opportunity to create a courtyard overlooking the border with spaces wrapping around the existing terrace and focusing views out towards the border.

I tested my programme on the Hay Festival and they said that they could benefit from sharing some of the spaces provided by my building and this would create a route straight from the street through the garage and towards the views of the border to the east. Also, currently the garage opens up to the north side but removing the building to the south allows the opportunity to create a porous and open debating space which allows for a greater transparency of politics.

Structurally, in order to do this I proposed using a similar structural strategy to the existing garage using a system of columns and trusses to form the library which has views over the Borderland, with the rest of the structure bleeding around the perimeter and connecting the two buildings to form a corridor overlooking the border.

The structure would be expressed internally with the appearance of the exterior connecting back to existing monolithic structures of the Borderland. For example the tower and other monolithic structures of the Castle and Church, but also the agricultural and filigree structures inspiring the structure. There would also be similarly proportioned openings to that of the existing street with the mullions in the windows representing those found in the existing garage. I took inspiration from Booths Bookshop in town which uses books as an internal material – framing openings which form seats but also desks – which would be how the walls of the library would be made. Books would line the walls but would also help acoustically, providing scattering of sound and reducing reverberation times.

Entering from the street you could enter through the Hay Festival into the garage space via the proposed link, or arriving from the border, you can enter along the north façade of the garage directly into the garage for a meeting for example. The main entrance to the scheme would be along the exhibit corridor which leads along the existing perimeter all the way into the tower.

The exhibit corridor is lit naturally from above from the skylight connection to the existing which creates a wash of light along the existing wall with display boards along this wall allowing the opportunity to display council projects but also exhibitions on the border or art and cultural exhibits. This then leads into the Borderland information centre on the ground floor of the tower, which provides the space where books are issued from the library but also information on the border for tourists.

Vertical circulation would then be done through the reinforced concrete stiff core which adjoins the terrace but also provides a buffer: connecting to the terrace and removing the need for bracing of the tower structure. This acts a conceptual support in the form of a buttress as is done in the existing Borderland structures of the Castle and Church towers.

The Garage is currently being used for a public consultation on a planning application and so benches have been pulled out from the sides and are being used to seat rows of people, with the developers presenting their work to the public.

The courtyard is being used by a group of walkers meeting and about to walk the Offas Dyke trail with a group of councillors also locating the site of the proposed development on the engraved border in the courtyard.

The exhibition of the drawings of this planning application is currently on display in the exhibit corridor and that is open to the public to view the drawings and pass comment on the scheme.

The precedent room in the library is currently being used by a group of councillors researching how healthcare policy is conducted over the Irish border and a tourist is looking at a collection of Borderland stories from the past.

Two councillors are using the Borderland observatory room in the tower. This space contains a Borderland model which is based from a drawing I did for an earlier part of the project which contains the whole Borderland. Positioning this strategically at the top of the tower allows it to be used to locate sites and talk about proposed development in the Borderland.

The height of the tower is subservient to the existing town and Castle but allows for expansive views across the Borderland.

Looking through past minutes of both existing councils I have found areas where the Borderland observatory and model room could be used to gain a better understanding of topics relating to the Borderland. Main issues relate to speeding over the border which through the use of the model and views can be used to decide the best position for infrastructure on both sides of the border to combat this problem.

This space can be seen in the technical model below.