Indeterminate Tower

The building mainly consists of two wings designed to support an open and typical plan, making them adaptable. The building is constructed with a minimum of columns to support this adaptability. The core of this building acts as the consistent element within it, tying together all the many programmes the building will house.

This key consistent element draws inspiration from how the railway running adjacent to the site acts as a constant in the ever-changing and wide range of architecture around the site. To support this adaptability and permanence the building, it is a brick monolith. Brick is a material found throughout the scales and time periods of Cardiff’s architecture so a building made from this material will be a part of Cardiff’s architecture for the longest possible period.

The building sits south of a public plaza created for the project, this plaza links a park designed to the East of the site and a series of small businesses housed under the railway arches north of the site. This plaza creates an inviting entrance to the site and scheme, leading to further public engagement with the project. The entrance to the lobby of the building is through an archway mirroring the arches directly north of the site as it confirms the inviting and opening theme of the arch in this area of Cardiff. The lobby itself is designed to be an open and light space supporting large Chicago windows on each exposed façade of the space, this creates a light and open area that can be used to further serve and support the various programmes the building will house. The building is generally split into two portions - the three lower ground floors which support a U-shaped band of rentable space around the core of the building. These floors also house plant rooms for boiling and ventilation as well as the bins storage for the building.

The fourth to twenty-fifth floors of the building support the H-shaped open plans inviting any potential programme. These upper floors are broken into two sections one with a 450mm taller floor-to-floor height (3900mm – 3450mm). Although these dimensions are generous enough to accommodate any programme, the lower floors could better support office and public spaces whilst the top portion could better support residential and hotel uses.