Buildings barometer

Reliable indices of a cities architectural well-being are normally difficult to come by.

One can arbitrarily walk around them or read the property pages of the local paper, but you still may not get an accurate picture of the place. Still less whether it is evolving architecturally or even going backward.

Swansea is very fortunate in that for the last twenty-two years it has held an annual event called the Lord Mayor's Design Awards. These have, over the last seven years at least, acted as an unwitting barometer of the improving quality of the city's new buildings.

The Lord Mayor's Design Awards (LMDA) were the brainchild of Trevor Osborne, Swansea's Director of Development in 1985, when Charles Thomas was the Lord Mayor.

In the early 1980s there were only a handful of entries each year and the reward for winning was actually a small cash prize.

Nowadays the awards normally attracts 30 to 40 entries per year and the 'prize' is the recognition that goes with winning Wales's longest-running design awards scheme.

Early on in its inception the awards could be wrapped up in the lunch hour period between noon and two o'clock with a modest 'finger buffet' laid on in the Guildhall's smallest function room. Last year's they attracted 400 people to a black-tie event held in the grand setting of the Brangwyn Hall.

How the judges judge

The judges now use a score sheet which marks each project on variables such as; siting/context, use of materials/finishes, visual impact/aesthetic and fitness for purpose. Scoring is marked out of ten, 1-3 is below average, 4-7 is average and 8-10 is outstanding.

Unfortunately last year no award could be made for sustainability.

The architect of the Millennium Centre, Jonathan Adams was a judge last year and he said "I have been really impressed by the LMDA in Swansea. It is the only award scheme that I have been involved in that seems to catch the imagination of the participating public...The LMDA is very popular, entries come from all sorts of people, and the dinner is massively well attended - all great to see".

I think this is borne out by the quality and variety of submissions to the LMDA since 2000. Since when Swansea has become, if not exactly a hotbed of modern architecture, considerably more responsive to it.

This can be demonstrated by the sequence of the three Technium buildings built in the city since the early 2000's, the National Pool on Ashleigh Road, the 'Sail Bridge' over the Tawe and last but not least, the National Waterfront Museum Swansea.

Architects working at a smaller scale are contributing too; Dewi Evans has produced imaginative work for both the "Nook" at Oxwich and Capstan House on Oystermouth Road.

Others like Nightingale Associates Day-Surgery Unit for Singleton Hospital and numerous projects either being built or planned, show the city at last warming to contemporary architecture.

Swansea's idiosyncratic nature

To the visitor it will still look like a place dominated by a smothering architectural inheritance of Victorian and Edwardian buildings, but this is perceptibly changing as the LMDA demonstrates.

Swansea's greatest civic virtue is its idiosyncratic nature, it can and does regularly surprise the visitor with unexpected gems such as the Maritime Quarter, the "Sail Bridge" and the National Waterfront Museum.

The annual Lord Mayor's Design Awards deserves to get more publicity than it receives; you very rarely get a snapshot of what a modern city is building across a great many building types and locations.

This article first appeared in the July edition of 'About Wales' the in-house journal of the Civic Trust.