2 minute read
Re-wilding the Site Magazine Development
community & engagement
engaging communities to create exciting places
Cardigan Castle, Wales
Purcell’s £8m transformation of Cardigan Castle, Wales evolved this Scheduled Monument site including 12 Grade I and II* listed buildings into a unique visitor attraction with exhibition galleries, education facilities and destination restaurant, lending a long-term sustainable future to this previously derelict and forgotten historic place.
The project won a vast array of multiple awards, including Channel 4 TV’s Restoration of the Year.
The scheme is exemplary for its sensitive and sophisticated design approach, but also in terms of the extensive stakeholder engagement led by Purcell’s throughout the process.
Our experience in community consultation helped the project steering group engage with communities to write a robust business strategy based on the best possible approach to space utilisation for the local audience. The Castle Project has had enormous beneficial impact on this small relatively remote local community. In addition to the 16 full time equivalent jobs that now exist, during the four-year construction period over 80 on-site jobs were created, providing important local employment and educational training opportunities in a wide range of conservation, construction, and operational skills.
With significant investment of volunteer effort, a tangible sense of ownership has been established within the local community, as the castle has been transformed from useless ruin into a life enhancing source of local and national pride.
- Joff Timms, Treasurer, Cardigan Trust
Kresen Kernow, Cornwall
Purcell led the £13m NLHF funded restoration and adaptive re-use of the derelict 19th Century Redruth Brewery adding new buildings to become the Kresen Kernow local heritage centre and archive at the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site and local Conservation Area. The scheme won multiple awards and is now considered a beacon for heritage-led urban regeneration. The project achieved a BREEAM Excellent Sustainability rating.
“This was an important industrial site, laid to ruin, which is now an important civic destination. It not only serves its own ends very well, but also anticipates and stitches together a number of broader urban ambitions with links to adjacent sites and the opening up and enhancement of natural habitat spines and waterways.”
- RIBA Award Judging Panel Exceeding social, sustainability and accessibility expectations was fundamental to the brief; the building needed to inspire and reflect the aspirations of its community. Purcell ran a series of participative design workshops for school and local community groups, in addition to the traditional planning preapplication sessions. Exploring how different users might impact the design was a critical contributor to the considerable local engagement and support this project yielded.
