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The Academi at the Wales Millennium Centre

 

The Academi is one of a group of arts organisations which will have permanent homes in the new Wales Millennium Centre currently under construction in Cardiff Bay. Along with Welsh National Opera, Urdd Gobaith Cymru, Diversions Dance Company, the Welsh Amateur Music Information Centre, Hijinx Theatre Company, The Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies, and the Touch Trust the Academi will be housed in the Percy Thomas Partnership's powerful construction situated next to the new Assembly building and dominating the Cardiff Bay Waterfront.



The building will evoke images of the Welsh landscape and of cultural and working traditions of Wales. It will be built of Welsh materials and will feature recycled slate blocks from the quarries of North Wales; special steel from Gwent, and native hardwoods from Mid Wales. The building will reflect the rock strata of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast and columns supporting the internal galleries will take the form of tree ferns which thrived in the area hundreds of millions of years ago and which are now found as fossils in the coal measures.

Roof gardens will reflect the windswept tress and grasses of the Cardigan coast. The architectural glass department of Swansea Institute is working with designers to insert 'fissures' of glass into the slate block walls of the Centre.

A major feature of the building will be a monumental inscription over the main entrance which will echo common practice in Roman architecture found in Wales. The inscription will emphasise and reflect the cultural aspirations of Wales. The text has been developed by poet Gwyneth Lewis using ideas presented by the Academi run competition to find a suitable inscription. (more details)

Inside, the Wales Millennium Centre will have theatre, opera, exhibition and performance spaces along with a variety of bars, restaurants and meeting spaces. In addition to literary performances the Centre will present West End Musicals, international opera, dance, youth activities as well as operating as a centre for artistic research and education.

The Wales Millennium Centre is a £70.6m project which will create work for over 350 - including 250 new jobs. Construction of architect Jonathan Adam's masterwork began in the spring of 1999 with completion expected by the end of 2001. The project is funded by the Millennium Commission, The Arts Council of Wales Lottery Fund, the public and private sectors along with European sources.