The Miners Welfare Center

'Our take on the brief and response to the site and context was loss of the Resolven Miners Welfare as the heart of the town. We heard tales of people and how their families used to commune at the centre, meet their friends and how some of their best memories existed there. We wanted to encapsulate this and restore the Welfare back to its former glory through increased architectural uplift, increased use of local assets, the addition of a warm room, restoring the buildings historical function within the community, and helping the community repair post covid.

These were the key design drivers behind our work. In order to keep a certain level of familiarity within the community were decided to remove the exterior layer on top of the brick work to allow the building to naturally breath reducing the risk of mould growth and damp conditions within the internal spaces. Reconfiguring the ground floor in order to create a seamless next stage of the first floor was key. Tight narrow corridors that made it hard to move around, especially with people who suffer from limited mobility, created a less enjoyable experience within the space and did not let the community and its loyal inhabitants shine through.

The spaces were boxy and dark, to improve this we increased the amount of natural light coming into the space and increased the connectivity to the outdoors allowing more fresh air into the space. The main addition was the warm room. In order to design this we had to remove the current extension which was poorly insulated and ventilated relying on costly mechanical ventilation to control the temperature in the space. This room was hardly used and make good sense to create the addition onto the existing Resolven Miners Welfare. This space maximised the use of glazing to capture natural day and sunlight coming into the space and played with horizontal and vertical louvers in order to help control too much internal solar gains. The warm has tables, chairs and housed the books from the local library with a place to buy teas a coffees. It was important to note that we did not want to strip any local business of any traffic, in order to do this we researched the types of business within the community and found that the addition of a sustainable café and library indeed benefitted the community instead of overshadowing smaller businesses.

Part of our proposal was to create a foyer like space where people could commune, socialise, chat and drink before, during and after performances at the local theatre above. Currently there is no where for people to do this and forcing people to stay in the auditorium or go straight home. It is important that people are given the chance to celebrate the local talent within the community and are given a space to do this.