Blaise Castle Visitor Centre

Bristol

New café and facilities within the walls of an existing cow byre at Blaise Castle which needed to be welcoming by day as an attractive visitor centre but secure by night to deter vandalism. Our structural design challenge was to work within the existing walls without disturbing them and to stabilise the building despite minimal internal cross walls. This left us with the question of how to integrate security shutters into what needed to be a delightful and charming visitor centre design. The new building frame cantilevers from the ground, providing structural stability with a sense of the building “floating” over the existing walls. The security shutters were integrated into the design so that they would open to create individual “niches” for the café tables and provide wind shelter.