The Hafod Eryri building on Snowdon. Photo: Aneurin Phillips
The mountain-top cafe and visitor centre on Wales’s highest peak has won an architectural award.
Hafod Eryri, near the 1,085m (3,560ft) summit of Snowdon, is among 93 projects in the UK to gain an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects. The building, at the head of the Snowdon Mountain Railway, also gained the Project of the Year award from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Wales.
The building, opened in June last year, was shortlisted in the RICS’s regeneration award category. It replaced a controversial Sir Clough Williams-Ellis-designed cafe that was famously dismissed by Prince Charles as the country’s highest slum.
Hafod Eryri, owned by the Snowdonia National Park Authority, took three years to build in conditions that included prolonged snow cover and has been designed to withstand winds of 240kph (150mph), temperatures of –20C and more than 5,000mm of rain a year. The building, the name of which means Snowdonia summer farmstead, was designed by Ray Hole Architects.
The national park authority, Welsh Assembly Government, Snowdon Mountain Railway, Visit Wales and members of the public all provided money for the project, which also attracted European funding.
Dave D
25 May 2010Personally, I think I preferred Clough Williams-Ellis's unobtrusive, (and in winter a wind shelter), 'slum' to the new self-aggrandising advert for Portuguese Granite, large and very obtrusive excrescence that now defaces the summit of the highest peak of Wales. And to have steps of Portuguese Granite leading to the very summit is adding insult to injury! Just a personal point of view...
NIC FISHER
26 May 2010It took three years to build this Ugly Bus Shelter that reminds me of the Machine Gun Bunkers used on the beaches of France during the D day landings by the Germans.(Saving Private Snowdon)
"IT DOES HOWEVER GET THE AWARD FOR BIGGEST POLISH BUS SHELTER ON A WELSH MOUNTAIN"
Mostyn Williams
26 May 2010It was supposed to "blend in" with the mountain, from the Nantllle Ridge it looks like a crashed barrage balloon. The only time it cannot be seen is when the summit is covered in cloud.
Chris
28 May 2010Certainly won't be winning any awards for catering anytime soon!
Okay, it's a big slab on top of the mountain and I am not expecting fine dining - but to run out of soup on a saturday morning by 11am and everything else (other than a tuna panini) is awful - how can they get the catering so wrong?
Cold + Wet weather = lots of people wanting hot food, therefore make sure you've plenty of supplies in!! Bloody train should bring some up if they run out - its run by the same people isnt it??
Tim Jones
11 June 2010What happened to the idea of locally sourced stone!!!!!!!!!!!!