Redwood Building (formerly Welsh College of Advanced Technology), Cardiff University

Cadw's description

Location

At northwest corner of the Cathays Park civic centre, directly north of the Temple of Peace and Health and facing the Welsh Government Offices across King Edward VII Avenue.

History

Teaching and scientific research building designed by Sir Percy Thomas and constructed 1958 to 1960, officially opened 1961 as the Welsh College of Advanced Technology. The cost was £624,727, not including equipment and furniture.

The UK’s post-war Colleges of Advanced Technology generally emerged from the adult education for the working class developed in Victorian cities. In 1866 Cardiff Borough Council began to run evening classes for working people in science and art subjects, based in rooms above the shops on St Mary Street, later relocated to the Free Library on the Hayes in 1882. In the 1890s the School of Science and Art was run on the Council’s behalf by the new University College in Cardiff with John Viriamu Jones (1856-1901) as the principal of both institutions. In 1907 the council took back direct management of the Technical College, as it was then known, and set about expanding it with a new building in Cathays Park. This building was opened in 1916 and was a competition winning design by Percy Thomas and Ivor Jones (this is now the Bute Building, home of Cardiff School of Architecture, see Listed building 13739). In 1919 the Technical College began to offer full time courses and began to draw students from across Wales and overseas.

The goal of the post-war Colleges of Advanced Technology was to stop Britian falling behind the advancing technology of the USA and the USSR. A white paper in 1956 lead to the creation of ten Colleges, with nine in England’s industrial centres and one in Wales’ recently created capital city. They would be an alternative to the sixteen universities in the UK with equivalent standards of teaching dedicated solely to higher level science and technology and linked closely to the needs of industry.

The Welsh College of Advanced Technology departments of pharmacy, chemistry, biology and navigation would move to a new building while other subjects including architecture, physics and engineering remained at the older college building. The site at the northwest corner of Cathays Park had been used for allotments and a small office building of the Welsh Insurance Commission, which was demolished. Sir Percy Thomas (1883-1969) designed this first post-war addition to the civic centre, the first new building in Cathays Park since the Temple of Peace and Health, also by Thomas, which stands between the Bute building and the College of Advanced Technology. Sir Percy Thomas said of these three buildings ‘I think they show fairly well the development of my ideas from the neo-grec of the original college, through the simplified classicism of the Temple of Peace, to the more modern treatment of … the College of Advanced Technology.’ It was amongst the last projects he was directly involved with before illness forced him to retire.

The programme for the building’s official opening on 2 June 1961 by the Duke of Edinburgh said:

‘Its exterior design is clearly influenced by the modern tendency towards greater architectural simplicity. At the same time, however, traditional materials have been used and the careful proportioning of voids and solids, together with facings of Portland stone, should enable it to take its proper place in the world-famous sequence of public-buildings in Cathays Park.’

The building was also said to be ‘designed as a factory, clothed as a college’ with service equipment and pipes given priority in the interior design. This enabled an expansion of research areas particularly for the pharmacists and chemists who occupied the whole of the south and east wings respectively (the smaller biology and navigation departments shared the west wing with a student’s union on the ground floor, while the north wing housed a refectory and assembly hall). The relief frieze over the main entrance by sculptor Edward Bainbridge Copnall cost £337 and 10 shillings and was carved in Portland stone as a ‘jigsaw’ of panels off site, with Copnall performing finishing touches with a power drill after it was assembled. Shortly after this Copnall became president of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 1961.

Following the Robbins report in 1963 the Colleges of Advanced Technology were folded into the dramatic expansion of university provision, losing some of their subject focus in the process. The Welsh College of Advanced Technology became the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST) in 1967 and merged with University College Cardiff in 1988, becoming Cardiff University in 2005. In 1979 the building was renamed the Redwood Building, and a pair of redwood trees were planted at the north corners in honour of Theophilus Redwood (1806-1892), a founding member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society from Boverton. Infilling additions to the internal courtyard were made in the 1970s and 1980s and various additions to the roof, including animal houses which have since fallen out of use, in the 1990s.

Exterior

Large Modernist three-storey building with four wide flat-roofed ranges around an inner courtyard. Trapezium in plan with the south range slightly longer than the north so that the west range faces the bend of the North Road while the front and sides are orthogonally arranged in relation to the rest of the Cathays Park civic complex. Steel framed on reinforced concrete foundations with pre-cast concrete floor plates, with Portland stone cladding to flat outer elevations and inner courtyard clad in brick. Windows are uniform tall and narrow steel frame casements with over lights in long regular bands, apart from stair lights which have some variations.

Principal elevation to east facing King Edward VII Avenue with main entrance on far left; wide and low set of three double doors, oak with square grid with frame of black terrazzo. To right of this door is foundation stone inscribed in English only:

‘THIS STONE WAS LAID BY SIR EDWARD BOYLE Bt., M.P., PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION TO COMMEMORATE THIS EXTENSION TO THE WELSH COLLEGE OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY 7TH OCTOBER 1958’

Large relief frieze over this entrance measures 26 feet high by 17 feet wide and was described at the official opening as ‘the figure of Knowledge teaching the students of the world’. Knowledge, a bald and bearded giant man wearing a toga, sits on a globe (with Atlantic Ocean centred) which in turn rests on a pile of two books. Arranged around him are symbols of the four main subjects originally taught at the college, with a star, sun and sextant to upper left representing Navigation and retort and Bunsen burner to the top right representing Pharmacy. Sheltered by Knowledge a woman in a lab coat on the lower right holds and examines a monkey which is itself scrutinising a flower, representing Biology, while to Knowledge’s lower left a man in a lab coat looks up into a test tube, representing chemistry. Main central bands of fenestration of 31 windows to each floor with very slight step back at right where building meets the north wing. A smaller block to right of six lights to each floor. To either side of this smaller block of windows are three small square stair lights surrounded by an expanse of Portland stone.

North elevation to Corbett Road has low and wide recessed triple door ground floor entrance to left, with three lights to each floor above, first floor band is stretched vertically with shallow railed balcony box. To right at ground floor a band of sixteen lights to refectory with raised stone surround and additional underlights (one replaced with door and access ramp). Over this is a large blind expanse of Portland stone enlivened with eight recessed squares at second floor height. To right a standard set of rows of six windows to each floor. Set back from northwest corner is a rooftop structure with ribbon glazing and Portland stone cladding, originally a classroom for the navigation department fitted out as a ship’s bridge.

West elevation to A470 North Road has nine windows to each floor on left with modern signage for Cardiff University and the name Redwood in void between second and first floor windows. To right of this oak double door with raised stone surround and short flight of steps flanked by low cuboids. First floor vertically stretched single window with underlight and shallow balconette over doorway with standard window to second floor. Main bands to right of this with 24 windows to first and second floor, truncated by two lights at ground level to meet recessed vehicle entrance to inner courtyard at right with modern roller shutter. Very slight step back in elevation to right where building meets the south wing, then six by three tall mullion and transom main stair light of tall and narrow single panes, with single door below. Flat topped Portland stone clad box to roof above this stairlight housing elevator services. To extreme right nine windows to each floor with narrow basement access stair below.

South elevation facing Temple of Peace and Health has 37 window band to each floor, with seven by three tall mullion and transom main stair light to right (beside main entrance in east face) of tall and narrow single panes.

Inner courtyard sides generally glazed as the exterior excepting north wing with large vertical multi-panes over first and second floor height formerly illuminating the assembly hall, and some smaller attic like glazing in upper parts of west wing. A fan shaped flat roofed lecture theatre protruding into the courtyard from the south wing is original, as is brick flat roof single storey block against inside of east wing, originally part of plastics and rubber laboratory. Other infill courtyard structures are later additions and the second floor of the south wing was originally recessed but was brought forwards by the mid-1970s.

Interior

Ranges generally organised with classes, offices and laboratories to either side of artificially lit central corridors. Most doors and integral corridor lockers and cupboards are original and services have been upgraded within the original ducts. Teaching spaces have seen more renewal of furniture and finishes but retain some early timber fume cupboards. Vernon Lloyd lecture theatre (named after the first Vice-principal of WCAT) on ground floor off the inner side of south wing is raked with original seating and desks and projectionist’s box amongst back rows.

Main entrance into terrazzo tiled and panelled hall with floating dog-leg staircase with quarter landings in corners and wide landings on each level above. Two panels in ground floor foyer, the first a war memorial in English only:

‘IN MEMORY OF ALL MEMBERS OF THE COLLEGE WHO DIED IN WORLD WARS 1914-1918 1939-1945 MAY THEY REST IN PEACE’

The second semi bilingual:

‘WELSH COLLEGE OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY – COLEG TECHNOLEG UWCHRADD CYMRU – THIS EXTENSION WAS OPENED BY H.R.H. THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH, K.G. ON FRIDAY 2ND JUNE 1961’

At southwest corner a trapezoidal staircase in dark polished concrete spirals around the elevator housing. A secondary lobby to northwest wing beside refectory area where archways are formed between the structural columns. The most significant remodelling has been to the north wing where what was a double floor height Assembly Hall has been subdivided, with the raked Paul Spencer Lecture Theatre on the second floor cut off from the large south facing windows by a sloping corridor along its side, and a northeast corner staircase leading up to a first floor vestibule to the hall has been covered over for extra office space (but survives as an awkwardly shaped store cupboard). The balcony and backstage dressing rooms have also been repurposed for science.

Reason for designation

The Redwood building is of special interest and Listed at Grade II notwithstanding some internal alterations for the following principal reasons:

Architectural Interest. A characteristic late work of Sir Percy Thomas, the acclaimed founder of Wales’ largest architectural practice of the twentieth century, representative of his post-war embrace of Modernism which would be taken forward by Dale Owen and others in the Percy Thomas Partnership until the millennium. The large relief sculpture the main entrance is a fine example of the work of Edward Bainbridge Copnall.

This structure has been afforded Interim Protection under Section 79 of the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023. It is an offence to damage this structure and you may be prosecuted. To find out more about Interim Protection, please visit the statutory notices page on the Cadw website. For further information about this structure, or to report any damage please contact Cadw.

Historic Interest. As Wales’ only College of Advanced Technology the building illustrates efforts to expand scientific education in the early Cold War. It was also an early example of the creation of new national institutions fuelling Cardiff’s growing status as a fledgling capital city for Wales. These are important aspects of Wales’ social and economic history.

Group Value. Group value with other Listed buildings in Cathays Park, especially the Temple of Peace and Health next door and the original Technical Institute (now the Bute Building) next door but one. These three buildings are all by the same nationally important architect and Sir Percy Thomas himself commented on how they illustrated his stylistic journey over his career.

The post 1961 additions to the inner courtyard and rooftops are not of special interest.