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THE WELCOME BUILDING

SEPTEMBER 2017

The Welcome Building

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.

RIBA SILVER MEDAL JUDGING

NOVEMBER 2015

In October Niall was one of 5 judges for this years RIBA President’s Silver Medal alongside Alexander Brodsky, Alan Jones, Carme Pinós and David Gloster who chaired the judging. The awards are given to the most outstanding design portfolios from work submitted by schools of architecture worldwide. The 2015 Silver Medal went to Finn Wilkie from the Mackintosh School of Architecture and the Bronze to Boon Yik Chung from the Bartlett School of Architecture. Marie Price from The University of Westminster won the Dissertation Medal.