School of Music, Cardiff University

Staff and student entrance in front centre leads to stairs on left with landings to each floor, these academic foyers walled in brick matching exterior. Public octagon glazed foyer on left leads to concert hall from the opposite side via rear WCs, bar and box office.

Full volume height concert hall can accommodate 250 on removable seating with tiered raised area to rear. Walls and ceilings retain original coffered and perforated acoustic panelling. Integral organ in wall to rear of stage with pipes set in deep alcoves. Single internal window to technicians’ room on first floor. Glass plaque in Welsh only on opposite wall commemorating official opening:

AGORWYD YR ADEILAD HWN GAN EI UCHELDER BRENHINOL DUG CAEREDIN CANGHELLOR PRIFYSGOL CYMRU AR 21 MAI 1971.

Teaching spaces are organised with smaller individual practice rooms and offices around the outer faces, mostly retaining one wall panelled in timber and the opposite plastered to produce an even acoustic. Larger teaching spaces in core of building with one double floor height lecture room across first and second floors with raked seating. Narrow storerooms running from front to back of building contain service ductwork and serve to isolate teaching rooms from each other acoustically. Elevator alongside rear stair. Ground floor library has been split into two after collection was moved elsewhere.

Three storey flat-roofed Modernist ‘shoe-box’ cuboid, concrete framed and clad in red brick to match Aberdare Hall, blind and unornamented to left side containing concert hall with minimal vertical slit steel framed windows on right side containing teaching rooms. Octagonal glazed audience foyer projects out from southwest face. Battered brick plinth except on northwest side. Third floor services block over teaching rooms is recessed into north corner of flat roof.

Projecting central canopy in front elevation over student entrance blind to front with narrow side lights and rooflight and inward sloping underside. Windows set in narrow vertical recesses, two tall lights to front staircase left of canopy, to right of canopy four lights to each floor on front right, six to each floor on right side with seventh window to second floor only towards rear, and six to rear elevation on right side with additional glazing to rear central stair. Shaped brick lintels and sills to windows. Low square hatch to rear of concert hall for electrical cables used for outside broadcasting of concerts.

Hexagonal flat lead roofed audience foyer, steel framed with four and a half plate glass sides, meets brick toilet block at rear. Double door glass entrance in south face up short flight of steps. Grassed front lawn sits below pavement height, originally red pavers connected student entrance to street via short flights of steps, causeway now raised in height in red brick to improve access in 2005. Red pavers also extend from front left under plinth to Three Obliques sculpture (see Listing 25834).