The Great Hall, Aberystwyth University

Lower ground floor entry from piazza into low ceilinged space with classroom and ceramics gallery (formerly a cloak room) to either side of wide staircase leading up to spacious foyer level. This is lit by the massive front glazing and dominated by the overhanging north gallery seating of the Great Hall, clad in the same aggregate panels as the exterior though the sloping underside has been covered over with a fabric screen. Below this are two entrances into the floor level of the Great Hall separated by an abstract cast aluminium sculptural artwork in three panels by David Tinker (1924-2000), the head of Aberystwyth Art School from 1962 to 1986, the work commissioned by Dale Owen. Staircase with middle landing directly above the first leads from foyer to mezzanine level wrapped against the north side of the building, connected to staircases up to east and west side gallery seating.

The Great Hall auditorium is a flat square with panelled sides, with raked upper gallery seating on three sides. Movable panels below the east gallery with the area beyond heavily glazed (the only point where natural light can reach the Hall interior). Both the square main floor space and the deep concrete square ceiling grid of the Great Hall are references to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Illinois of 1908, which like this drew inspiration from the architecture of Welsh nonconformist chapels with its tiered gallery seating.

The chapel faith space is internally isolated on lower ground floor entered from the piazza at the end closer to the Bell Tower, interior mainly finished in brick. Above this are plant and kitchen rooms, ‘backstage’ of the Great Hall.

Modernist Great Hall in the Brutalist style characterised by highly expressive massing and use of materials, in reinforced concrete (both pre-cast and in situ), with aggregate panels of Cornish grey granite, bricks of matching colour and large areas of steel-framed glazing. The main volume is a large flat-roofed rectangle substantially glazed on the long west and east sides, losing a floor in height on the east side due to stepped terrace landscaping. The taller flat-topped cuboid of the hall sits within this off centre to the south, with its upper raked galleries to west and east expressed as overhanging granite cliff faces, sloping upwards and out and then vertically, which puncture through both the glass and the panelling on the long sides.

West side facing the main piazza has recessed lower floor, originally to give a sheltered pedestrian route around the building, now largely glazed off in the middle to create a coffee shop. This lower ground floor plinth level is finished in vertical concrete strips resembling timber planks. Rectangular concrete slab portico braced by two columns and cantilevered over approach to the front entrance on the left side, where it aligns with the stairs up on to the piazza. Entrance to chapel on right. The upper volume is clad in square and rectangular panels forming a grid that stretches vertically in the middle and compresses at the top and bottom, framing a wide expanse of glazing with 80 vertical panes in two levels, the upper panes more than double the height of the lower panes except where they are cut short by the projecting mass of the gallery. The internal organisation of the foyer level, mezzanine and staircases is clearly visible through this glazing.

East side is similar, without the plinth level, with glazing below the overhanging gallery and recessed doors directly into the Great Hall to both sides. South side has a similar projecting upper mass, the vertical top part of which has four pane ribbon windows (replaced in uPVC) either side of a six-panel ventilator (all the other projections internally and externally are blind). This overhang is framed by vertical and horizontal ribbon windows with a compressed ground floor window below and doors on either side, the left side door (on SW corner) accessed by cantilevered external staircase. North side was originally mostly blind with a much smaller projecting overhang with vertical panel windows on either side, one of which has now become an internal corridor as part of the 1999 extensions.