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The Weston, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The Weston is a gallery, shop and café for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The building was constructed in a former quarry, making use of the site’s topography to shelter from the nearby road and maximise views across the park.

Sculptural external walls were formed in layered concrete, jet-washed to expose the texture of varying aggregates from local quarries. The walls are described further in a Concrete Quarterly feature on rough textured concrete (p.12-15). The gallery features an in-situ concrete sawtooth roof and the café was constructed as a Douglas fir timber frame with cruciform internal columns and slender loadbearing mullions along the glazed façade.

The building was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2019 and was the winner of several awards including a Civic Trust Award and RIBA Regional and National Awards.

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This concrete wall uses a variety of exposed local aggregates to produce a strata-like effect. It is almost as though the building has been hewn from the ground…..The timber structure creates a warm, almost domestic, feel to the interior of the café and visitor centre. Services installations are discreetly hidden from view and well-integrated into the building structure.

RIBA Judges
YSP 1
Location
West Yorkshire, UK
Architect(s)
Feilden Fowles Architects
Photographer(s)
Mike Dinsdale, Peter Cook
Awards
RIBA - Yorkshire Award, Winner, RIBA - National Award, Winner, RIBA - Yorkshire Building of the Year, Winner, Civic Trust - Yorkshire and Humberside, Winner, RIBA - Stirling Prize, Finalist