A Worker’s Yard for opportunity and Tram for reconnecting in the heart of the Afan Valley

After an exploration of site, it became apparent that a great community spirit inhabited the Afan Valley and its villages but it remained hidden behind uninspiring architecture with no community outlet that played a poor supporting role to the sublime natural landscape surrounding it. This element of community lead to a further exploration within the wider area to a sense of abandonment. With no serious transport links, the theme of reconnecting became a prominent feature of the project.

When the once dominant mining industry ceased in the 1970s, the valley that had once hosted this phenomenon of man, unwillingly endeavoured on a downward spiral. The trains that had carted the coal to the port cities of Cardiff and Swansea, halted and the network of tracks were torn up in favour of tarmac. This left a community stranded and held hostage as ‘Prisoners of Geography’. In a demographic where only 40% own a car, it became a founding principle of the project that any architectural intervention would need a supporting link to reconnect the valley’s villages and beyond.

The project sought to bring a craft and industry back to the Afan Valley and Cymmer that first worked for the people. This would take the form of workshops with accommodation arranged around a yard, acting as an epicentre for the village. Through heavy iterative design and modelling, the beginnings of a design soon began to form. One exercise involved taking precedent spaces of similar uses and arranging them on a site map, cutting them up and playing with the forms. This lead to a General Assembly map that determined the overall site occupation. Precedents were used at every point, but the work of railway architecture stood out as built forms that reacted to site and industry well, with functionality dictating form. This however gave rise to inspiring architecture that became bold but sensitive when positioned in the context of the Afan Valley. Poetry also played an integral role in appreciating the complexities of site and providing a level of detail to the final proposal that worked for characters of the Village. To achieve this magnification, 5 clients within the scheme were chosen to highlight the flexibility in the forms that were designed to work and adapt to the craftspeople.

The project was led by the spirit first encountered on site. That spirit finds itself as the people of the Afan Valley. A people and landscape that have experienced the incomparable scale of the South Wales mining industry and the trials and tribulations that went with it. This industry of serving those far away from the valley has been left in the past, giving space for a new chapter of industry that works for the people and the landscape, seeking to reignite the villages accompanied by a new light rail network to allow for opportunity for all in Afan.