Ellis Williams Architects’ refurbishment of a listed Victorian gallery in Llandudno, North Wales, completed in 2010, is just one of more than 3,200 projects that you can find in the AJ Buildings Library. Designed in 1900 by Welsh architect G A Humphreys, the original Mostyn Gallery closed in 1913 when it was requisitioned for use as a drill hall for the First World War. It subsequently housed offices for the Inland Revenue.
Mostyn contemporary gallery – now known as Mostyn Cymru – was set up in 1978 and rehoused in the original building. In 2003, it began to acquire additional space in neighbouring buildings and a full-scale refurbishment commenced in 2007.
Ellis Williams was commissioned to restore the façade, canopy and original exhibition galleries, as well as providing four new gallery spaces and facilities including a café, shop and education spaces around a concrete circulation core.
Internal additions include a board-imprinted in-situ concrete circulation lightwell, bringing natural daylight into the gallery’s dark rear spaces.
“The refurbishment of the 1901 building has returned the incomparable exhibition spaces to pristine condition, given unity and grace to a previously divided and compartmentalised street-level frontage, and made the striking terracotta façade a landmark building for the town of Llandudno”.
Martin Barlow – Mostyn Cymru Gallery Director
Awards:
- 2011 Welsh National Eistedfodd Gold Medal for Architecture
- 2011 Civic Trust Award
- 2011 RIBA Award
- Shortlisted for AJ Building of the Year 2011
- Shortlisted for Concrete Awards 2011
- Shortlisted for AJ 3DR Award for Cultural Building 2011
- Longlisted for the Art Fund Prize 2011
The full article can be read on the AJ Buildings Library website here
