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Client:   WJEC / CBAC Ltd.
Location:  Cardiff
Services:  Architecture
Sector:   Offices
Contract Type:  NEC Partnership Contract
Project Value:  N/A
Start:  November 2007
Completion:  February 2010
Awards:   Shortlisted RIBA Award 2010

The Project

This 6,000sqm, five storey building provides carefully tailored office accommodation for WJEC, the organisation which delivers a variety of education and assessment services across Wales and England, including the setting and awarding of GCSEs and A-levels.

Sited between one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares and grade two-listed Llandaff Fields, the design features a suite of flexible conference and meeting rooms, as well as a staff restaurant, public bookshop, gallery space and an audio-visual recording studio. The building also includes a raft of eco-friendly features to reduce energy consumption including an exposed structure to provide thermal mass; natural ventilation and day lighting; a highly insulating building envelope; and energy efficient heating and lighting systems.

The exterior of the building is clad with a combination of clay tiles on the southerly elevations and a tessellating pattern of coloured aluminium panels which wrap around the northerly elevations. The building’s plinth is formed in a band of sandstone river pebbles which were recovered during excavation of the site.

The new building, which occupies the same site as the old WJEC offices, reflects the increasing diversity of WJEC projects and the recent growth of its examination services into the English schools market. Its previous “black box” office, in which most of the WJEC’s 230 staff had been housed since 1970, was designed in the late 1950s as a TV studio before being converted into offices for WJEC. Constructed well before the advent of modern building regulations, it did not meet current targets for environmental sustainability and was well beyond the end of its useful life.

The project also incorporated a complex external works element, providing a new, safe access junction on the adjacent Western Avenue and a large landscaped car park. The new building was constructed in two phases - staff transferred from the old building into the new after the completion of the first phase, while the second phase was constructed following demolition of the old WJEC building.