The Wales Millennium Centre comprises one large theatre and two smaller halls with shops, bars and restaurants. It houses the national orchestra and opera, dance, theatre and literature companies, a total of eight arts organisations in residence. Board members include Sir Michael Checkland. The project failed to win financial support from the Millennium Commission, the body which distributed funds from the UK National Lottery.
An international design competition attracted international applicants, and was won by Iraq-born architect Zaha Hadid. Her avant-garde design was so radical that she and a selection of other applicants were asked to submit revised designs for a second round of competition—which she again won with "a sleek and dazzling complex of sharp lines and surfaces that she compared to an 'inverted necklace'".
In December , the Millennium Commission decided against lottery-money funding for the project. After the Cardiff Bay Opera House project was rejected, a new project was conceived that included more than opera and was felt to be a better reflection of Welsh culture. The change of name symbolised this, but the project still had to overcome many hurdles.
Funding from the Welsh Assembly and Millennium Commission took years to obtain. Cardiff Council had to buy the land after the previous owners, Grosvenor Waterside Associated British Ports property division threatened to build a retail centre there due to the delays.
This is believed to be the largest single private donation ever made to the arts in the UK. The building also includes rehearsal rooms, orchestral facilities for the Welsh National Opera, dance studios for Diversions, called The Dance House, and the Blue Room, with seating for up to His first concept drawings were made in early , by his design was starting to look more like the building it is today.
Carr and Angier were the theatre consultants. Martin Dawkins Traditional Bricklayers. The architect's concept of the building was a building that expressed "Welshness" and was instantly recognisable. The building was designed to reflect the many different parts of Wales with local Welsh materials that dominate its history: slate, metal, wood and glass. All the materials used come from Wales; the WMC was built from 1, tonnes of Welsh slate, , concrete blocks, and a million metres of electric cable.
The exterior of the building is clad in multi-coloured slate collected from Welsh slate quarries. Narrow windows are built into the layers of slate to give the impression of rock; strata they depict the different stone layers in sea cliffs.
The purple slate came from the Penrhyn Quarry, the blue from Cwt y Bugail Quarry, the green from the Nantlle Valley, the grey from Llechwedd quarry, and the black from the Corris Quarry. I always loved going to Ogmore and Southerndown. I thought the cliffs there looked like a building anyway.
The Centre was conceived, for the same site, as a centre with a broader artistic remit. Wales Millennium Centre is also a creative organisation in its own right, increasingly producing its own touring work and curating high-profile festivals and engagement projects. WNO performs three seasons per year at the Centre. Urdd Gobaith Cymru Welsh youth organisation has a hostel in the Centre which gives young people from across Wales an insight into the arts and into their capital city.
The Touch Trust provides creative therapy sessions at the Centre for disabled children and adults. It is shaped to echo the undulating landscapes of Wales.
It is a world of its own, although one that invites people, parading down Lloyd George Avenue, into its great foyer. This is fronted by a stylised copper portico leaning out and sweeping up from the face of the building and cut through with monumental glazed calligraphy. Two inscriptions, side by side, one in English, the other in Welsh, have been composed by the poet Gwyneth Lewis.
According to Lewis: "The copper dome of the building reminded me of the furnaces of Wales's industrial heritage. I wanted to link that to medieval Welsh tradition, and Ceridwen's cauldron from which the poet Taliesin received his inspiration. I wanted the words also to reflect the architecture, to use its physical presence as a metaphor for our collective values as a nation. The exterior of the building might appear to be stern geological stuff conveying age-old cultural messages, yet the interior is a mostly magical place.
Steel walls and timber-lined stairs lead from the airy lobbies into the almost grotto-like lyric theatre. Here, large boxes sweep out of cliff-like red plaster walls. Curves abound. It would be a great space for pantomine and for phantoms of the opera as much as for Verdi or Wagner. Its acoustics can be tuned for a great variety of performances and volumes.
Seats, covered in Bute fabrics, are handsome, comfortable wood-framed affairs sweeping elegantly in tier after tier up through bridge-like balconies. Crafted throughout, the building boasts custom-designed door handles and other fine conceits that all but vanished from public architecture in the mids.
This is not, in any way, a catalogue building.
0コメント