bbc roath lock studios tour

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Roath Lock studios, Cardiff – review

F or nearly a century, architects have viewed facades with mistrust, going on fear and loathing. This feature, almost universal in all previous architecture, ever, came to be seen as fake and deceitful, as something like the hypocritical morality of the 19th century, and contrary to the modernist ideal of displaying the inner nature of a building on the outside. In the 1960s the architects and theorists Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown led a reaction, praising what they called the "decorated shed", but by the 1980s the revived facade was being abused as a postmodern wrapper for bankers' palaces, which seemed to prove that the fear and mistrust had been justified.

The new Roath Lock studios for BBC Wales in Cardiff are, architecturally speaking, almost all facade. There are 250 metres of it, looking across an old dock to the trophies of Cardiff's 25-year efforts at renewal – the Welsh Assembly Building by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and the Wales Millennium Centre on the site where Zaha Hadid 's doomed opera house was once planned. Around the studios is empty space awaiting development under a regeneration plan backed by the Welsh government, and behind is a bit of Cardiff's docks that is still in use for shipping.

The studios are built on the success of Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood , just as Cardiff's finest buildings were once founded on coal. The phenomenal popularity of the Time Lord's show, which since its revival in 2005 has been made in Wales, has helped provide the funds and confidence to build a £20m complex where the programme is now made. A corridor in the new building has been named "Russell's Alley", in tribute to the contribution of the Doctor Who executive producer and screenwriter Russell T Davies .

The aim of the new building is to provide ample, well-appointed, highly sustainable production and post-production facilities for the making of Doctor Who , Casualty , Upstairs Downstairs and the BBC's longest running soap opera, the 37-year-old Welsh-language Pobol y Cwm . It means that scattered facilities can be brought together: the downstairs in Upstairs Downstairs , for example, used to be several miles away from the upstairs. Now they are under the same roof.

The complex consists of large sheds interspersed with functional courts and alleys, as in a Hollywood film lot, punctuated with sets of extreme specificity. For Casualty , the mediocre design of a PFI hospital is recreated with uncanny precision, down to the ridiculous public art in the car park. For Pobol y Cwm they have built a chapel front, an estate agent and chippy, and little back gardens with immaculately reconstructed B&Q decking.

Unusual design requirements include corridors wide enough for two Daleks to pass, and a recreation of Holby City hospital's car park in precisely the same orientation as the one in its former location in Bristol. The fear is that meteorologically aware Casualty nerds will bombard the Beeb with complaints if they spot that the shadows are falling in a different way. They also had to make sure that an ambulance could roar into the place without hitting any buildings.

Amid all this stage architecture, what might be called "proper" architecture – as in, designed by architects and written about by architectural critics – doesn't get much of a look in. After all, not even the greatest geniuses in the history of the art, not Palladio nor Wren nor Le Corbusier, have performed spatial magic to match the big-inside-small-outside effect of the Tardis.

Nor is this new building a work of the BBC in Medici mode, as they were in the early days of their expansion of Broadcasting House . It is more like the installation of BBC North at MediaCity in Salford , where a hopefully business-like deal was struck with the developer of a publicly assisted regeneration project. In Cardiff their partner was Igloo , an investment fund dedicated to "socially responsible development", who appointed the architects FAT , whose design seems to have taken the BBC somewhat by surprise.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said it was like a cross between the Doge's Palace and Ikea, which for Sean Griffiths of FAT is mostly a compliment. His practice is, he says, "the UK leader in decorated sheds", which was what was called for here. Or rather, there was no choice but for it to be a shed, only whether to decorate it or not.

The issue, says Griffiths, was "how do you give any life at all to an immensely long elevation with only one door", which looks onto a quayside awaiting development and currently populated only by some hardy black pines, chosen for their ability to survive salty air. It has to deal with a problem common to incomplete regeneration projects, which is how to suggest life that is not yet there. A laughable hotel across the water, with a frantic roof in the style of Santiago Calatrava, shows how not to do it.

The BBC, moreover, are extremely sensitive about giving away future plotlines and details, and don't want people looking into their studios. The windows to the cafeteria are frosted, in case anyone peers in, sees a new Doctor Who alien having a cup of tea and goes viral with phone-snaps of it. Transparency, a favourite trope of modern architects, is therefore not possible.

FAT, who need little encouragement to come up with such things, have responded with a facade that is mannerist, baroque and "sci-fi retro", which has big cross-shaped windows in reference to Casualty , and gothic octofoils in homage to William Burges , the exuberant Victorian who built his greatest works near here. It is, says Griffiths, "a bit mountain-y" and "a bit wave-y", in response to the local landscape. You can detect the shapes of houses like those in Pobol y Cwm that "morph into space invaders", with a centrepiece that is " Doctor Who goes to Las Vegas" or "baroque mixed with what a cyberman looks like".

The aim is to communicate and engage, to escape constricting notions of good taste and create a "narrative" with which people can connect – and whether you get all the references is not entirely the point, as opposed to getting the sense that someone is talking to you. "Most people don't go into most buildings," says Griffiths. "The facade is what they experience. If you mention the Taj Mahal, what people think of is the facade." He wants to address "the experience when you are there", rather than the "doodle seen from 20,000 feet" that some iconic architects provide. The elevation is designed to work at different scales, with its exaggerated gables speaking to the view from across the dock, while a lower level squiggle addresses the eyeline of passersby.

If FAT can sound flip they are actually serious. They study historic architecture in a way that few other contemporary architects do, and try to learn from, for example, the effects of layering and depth you get in 16th- and 17th-century Italy. They compose and seek complexity. They want to make their shed seem substantial and "tactile", so they give an exaggerated thickness to its facade.

That the results are not precisely like those of Florence or Rome is due to the ferocious constraints of time and money under which buildings are now built, and the contracts that limit the architect's role to specific areas. FAT would have liked to spread their influence deeper into the building – to the somewhat basic reception and cafeteria areas, for example – but it was not possible. "Computers and Excel spreadsheets make the world," says Griffiths, "and it's a strange assumption to think that architects have any power to change it." FAT's attitude is rather to make the best of what they've got.

Making the best of it in this case leads to a facade where their escape from good taste has been achieved with exceptional success, but which might fairly be described as stonking. It is bold, engaging, rich, entertaining and complex. It commands its tough site and helps you forget that this zone is still largely wasteland. It achieves something beyond the abilities of many current architects, which is to make a very big facade. Of all the BBC's recent adventures in architectural patronage it is, by accident, one of the most successful.

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Bbc’s roath lock studios, cardiff.

• Post author: dan-marius
• Post published: June 5, 2012
• Post category: video
• Post comments: 1 Comment

The BBC have released a  video  to introduce the new Roath Lock Studios at Cardiff Bay, presented by the Doctor Who’s old cast (they were replaced by Jenna-Louise Coleman ) of Arthur Darvill, Karen Gillan and Matt Smith.

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Behind the scenes at BBC Wales’ new drama village Roath Lock

Ever wondered where television drama gets premature babies from or where Cwmderi really is?

• 00:00, 10 MAR 2012
• Updated 19:33, 26 MAR 2013

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Ever wondered where television drama gets premature babies from or where Cwmderi really is? Just before its official opening, Abbie Wightwick is granted an exclusive tour around BBC Wales’ Roath Lock drama village

To say it’s disconcerting to see bleeding torsos, severed limbs and a box of innards stacked neatly on shelves is something of an understatement.

Beneath them a selection of hairy silicone chests sit ready for actors to wear should they need open heart surgery on set.

Such is the gory attention to detail that a trip to the prosthetics room for BBC One medical drama Casualty is bound to be one of the highlights of tours around the Roath Lock Drama Village in Cardiff Bay this weekend.

For the first time BBC Wales has invited the public to have a peek into its new, purpose built centre where some of its best known dramas are made.

The 175,000sq ft site is home to Doctor Who, Casualty, Pobol y Cwm and Upstairs Downstairs. Merlin and Being Human are also filmed there.

Set behind the largest dry stone wall in Wales, the village has been open for filming since last summer, but this is the first time it has revealed its secrets to the public. And I was lucky enough to get in there first.

Visitors lucky enough to get a ticket for guided tours today and tomorrow can do what I did on this fascinating adventure by strolling through sets, stepping inside a Tardis and learn insider secrets.

Want to know how fake snow is made or life-threatening injuries are created?

I found the answers – and much more besides.

Walking onto the Casualty set through the familiar entrance to Holby City Hospital and on to the reception I couldn’t help but do a double take. The new life-size set is so like a genuine hospital I automatically reached for the hand sanitiser attached to the wall.

Much of the equipment is authentic, redundant NHS stock, including an MRI scanner fitted with fake laser beams.

I was tempted to help myself from the hospital shop stocked with real chocolate bars and lazily jump in the lift rather than walk up the hospital stairs.

Although the lifts are the real McCoy, complete with working sliding doors, they don’t actually go up and down as they would in real life.

Instead I was led up the full-sized double staircase leading to wards bristling with equipment that are so lifelike I imagined patients could really be treated there. One had even been made out as a children’s ward, complete with teddy bears and toys.

I saw a glass-fronted office where consultants make and break careers, and a pharmacy stacked with bottles and boxes. They looked real but didn’t rattle when I shook them – I just couldn’t help myself.

Downstairs, the hospital reception led on to operating rooms where steel trays lined with scalpels lay ready to slice open silicone bodies complete with full-on gore bursting out through cuts and ferocious wounds. Shivering at the gleaming blades, I tiptoed out across the tiled floor which emitted an institutional squeak. See what I mean about authenticity?

Across the corridor bits of tape showed where actors were scripted to stand otherwise I might have thought I was walking into a manned ambulance station, so large and well equipped is the screen version.

Eight fully road-worthy ambulances were parked alongside two motorbikes and an emergency response vehicle.

Trust me, you will think you can hear sirens wail as you stroll out onto Alexander Street, the road from which Holby City emergency vehicles now race each Saturday night on our screens.

When Casualty moved to Roath Lock from Bristol last year it meant everything was on one site for the first time and they could film going in and out of the station.

In Bristol they shot on location at a real, working ambulance station. This caused problems if true emergencies unfolded as filming had to stop and could never move seamlessly into the street. In Cardiff, Casualty has space for an entire ambulance station and because everything in a medical drama must look realistic it’s easier having props, set builders and special effects staff on hand.

“It’s great having everything in one place, much easier,” production manager David Harvey told me, as he took me around.

“Attention to detail has to be precise and accurate because people can tell if it’s fake. Some of the equipment we use is real and some isn’t. We buy redundant medical equipment and machinery from hospitals.”

He directed me straight from the ambulance bay through the hospital front doors to the reception area and the consulting rooms beyond.

This complete set means action can move fluidly through the hospital and straight up the staircase to wards and offices.

Keeping stories fast moving and exciting is the name of the game.

“There’s a need to keep drama vibrant and it’s nice to get deep shots of people moving around with the camera rolling back with them,” David explained.

Casualty is the world’s longest running medical drama and after 26 years has acquired a vast amount of props and costumes.

Poking around the cavernous stock room I spotted artefacts from stories down the years, each waiting their turn to be used again.

There was a pile of gravestones, African drums and, oddly perhaps, strings of lamp shades hanging from the ceiling.

Downstairs in the costume room were rails of nurses’ uniforms and fluorescent jackets hanging beside hundreds of pairs of shoes in every shape and size.

In the same corridor, just off set, are the make-up studios and prosthetics room.

This is the preserve of make-up artist Derek Lloyd who fashions limbs, injuries and even babies from silicone.

Taking plaster casts of actors’ body parts, Derek told me he creates silicone moulds, complete with skin texture, which can be slipped on so all manner of accidents and injuries can be mimicked, some so realistic it left me feeling quite nauseous.

So be prepared!

I was urged to feel a soggy, spongy piece of material used to make fake organs and to press my fingers in the side of a too lifelike bloodied torso. It was an experience I won’t forget in a hurry.

Medical advisers work with programme makers to get all facts and effects as accurate as possible: next page

Tour guides will show how bones are made to protrude from limb injuries and explain how a hidden bag spurts up blood as medics rummage around on camera.

“We’ve got plenty of fake blood here,” laughed Derek, pointing to syringes and drips.

Medical advisers and doctors work with programme makers to get all facts and effects as accurate as possible so he is an expert at which organ goes where.

Seeing how premature babies are made could be an outing in itself.

They’re moulded from silicone and the ones I was lucky enough to see were so eerily lifelike I had to fight the urge to comfort them, especially when their little hands curled.

If you’re one of the lucky ones to bag a ticket for this weekend’s look around you’ll see Derek’s “animatronic” silicone premature baby. It’s so lifelike, each finger moves.

Artists make it look like it’s breathing with a member of production staff blowing through a tiny hidden tube.

“It’s a bit like an upside down puppet,” chuckled Derek, popping the fake baby onto an incubator and vanishing beneath it to breathe life into its pretend lungs.

“We have stand-bys on each episode pumping blood or making them look like they’re breathing,” he told me.

“The public don’t realise what an enormous amount of attention goes into it all behind the scenes.”

If all this blood is a bit much you can stop in at the Holby City pub which has everything except alcohol, including comfy chairs and the compulsory dodgy paintings of ships.

It’s cosy enough to make you want to while away the day sipping a few drinks, but there’s no booze on offer except the pretend dregs at the bottom of glasses left from a previous shoot.

Pubs are a good place for storylines to unfurl and I soon spotted another famous watering hole just down the corridor.

The Y Deri is at the heart of Cwmderi, the setting for the UK’s longest running soap, Pobol y Cwm.

Since the Pobol set moved from BBC Wales HQ in Llandaff, Cardiff, last year, the famous street is now more than a mere facade.

Sauntering down it I went into the cafe and stopped at the shop and hair salon. Work is taking place to enable the upstairs of buildings to be used and a chapel has been built behind them.

Ten actors from Pobol will be strolling the streets for this weekend’s tours, further blurring fantasy from reality for visitors.

Kevin Powell may not be able to serve actual coffee from his cafe but everything is so realistic I could almost smell it in the air.

If you’ve forgotten money you may be tempted to try the street’s lifelike cash point machine or even glance at house prices as you’re passing the estate agent’s window.

Cars can be driven on and off set for the first time and there are even back gardens through the famous archway beside the shop.

Props I saw included fresh flowers which were on sale outside the shop and baskets of lemons in the cafe. You’ll learn that all of this has to be checked and changed before filming starts, if necessary.

Drama production executive Llyr Morus, who will be leading today’s tours, says being able to film inside the Pobol y Cwm buildings for the first time, rather than use separate sets, has helped keep the action fluid.

With 260 episodes shot each year it’s easier to have a purpose built set instead of having to move from outside to inside sets as before. I was surprised to find the street open to the elements, but if it’s raining actors can now just step indoors.

Pre-Roath Lock, filming would stop and be done elsewhere.

“The new set makes storytelling better. There are 24 sets, 15 in the studio and the rest in the street,” Llyr explained.

When all the series moved to Roath Lock, sets were obviously going to be slightly different. Casualty writers got around the problem by having a huge, dramatic fire destroy the original Holby City Hospital as part of the storyline.

When filming resumed on the newly built Cardiff Bay site viewers naturally expected a new and different hospital.

“Pobol writers decided not to have anything dramatic like a helicopter crash to change things,” revealed Llyr.

Instead the series’ writers are now slowly introducing changes so viewers aren’t bombarded with too many unbelievable alterations all at once.

One such change is the newly built chapel. Previously Pobol used the outside of a real chapel and it was clearly out of town. Now it has been brought into Cwmderi.

Llyr hopes viewers will enjoy getting a glimpse behind the scenes to see how television drama is made.

Tours will start at the beginning of the “yellow brick road”, the corridor separating sets and studios from the offices and dressing rooms on the other side. One hundred visitors will come at a time, split into three groups – Pobol y Cwm, Casualty and Doctor Who.

One group will be taken to the Pobol set, the other to Casualty and the third will start its tour at the special exhibition room. Here they’ll be shown clips from the series housed in Cardiff and discover some trade secrets, such as how special effects like fake snow are made.

They’ll also get a chance to step inside Doctor Who’s Tardis and look at costumes from Upstairs Downstairs.

But it’s not just the series made at Roath Lock studios that are dramatic.

Walking through the village I realised it has a character and a story all its own.

The size of three football pitches, the “village” contains nine studios as well as sets and a warren of costume, make-up, props and other rooms.

Inside are offices where writers pen stories and executives watch the first rushes.

Just steps away from sets and studios, the creatives are on hand for any alterations.

The building was made to have as little environmental impact as possible so rainwater powers the lavatories, chip fat fuels generators and there are bike racks if any of thee 400 to 600 people working there at any one time want to cycle in.

Actors feeling peckish may not be able to grab a bar of chocolate from the Holby City Hospital shop or a latte to go from the Cwmderi cafe.

Instead they can use the staff canteen and on-site Starbucks franchise inside the main building.

The site, tucked away beside the water at the Cardiff Bay end of the barrage just beyond the Norwegian Church, doesn’t advertise its presence, though it’s clearly something special if you happen to go past.

From the top of the beautiful thick, dry stone wall, built partly as soundproofing during filming, peaks a tantalising glimpse of Cwmderi chimneys.

Tight security means on most days the public can’t see anything beyond this with vast electronic gates securing all access in and out.

This closed off secrecy gives the village a mysterious, exciting air, a bit like the chocolate factory hidden away in the famous Roald Dahl story.

But for this weekend visitors won’t need a golden ticket when Roath Lock Drama Village opens its doors.

Although there are no plans to repeat the tours at the moment, if they prove successful they may be run again.

A true cliffhanger, if ever there was one.

* Casualty star Suzanne Packer, Upstairs Downstairs’Art Malik, Doctor Who reviver Russell T Davies and John Barrowman are on hand to give their thoughts on the new studio in Drama In The Bay on BBC Two Wales at 7pm on Monday. Earlier in the day, First Minister Carwyn Jones will officially open Roath Lock

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Roath Lock Studios

Roath Lock is a purpose built studio production facility, comprised of 9 studios and additional production support facilities such as offices and parking.

Porth Teigr Way, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4GA, Cardiff, UK.

Totalling 33,658 sq. ft (3,129m2), all stages are sound-proofed and air-conditioned.

Stage 1: 8,699 sq. ft. (809m2) Length: 131.6 ft (40.1m) Width: 66.1 ft (20.2m) Height: 24.2 ft. (7.4m)

Stage 2: 5,101 sq. ft. (474m2) Length: 90.6 ft (27.6m) Width: 56.3 ft (17.2m) Height: 24.2 ft. (7.4m)

Stage 3: 7,539 sq. ft. (701m2) Length: 113.8 ft (34.7m) Width: 66.2 ft (20.2m) Height: 24.2 ft. (7.4m)

Stage 4: 12,318 sq. ft. (1,145m2) Length: 144.4 ft (44m) Width: 85.3 ft (26m) Height: 38.7 ft. (11.8m)

Additional Facilities

Production Offices: 4,535 sq. ft. (421m2) of office space available equipped with meeting rooms and a kitchen

On-set Parking: Currently configured to have 40 cars and 6 large trailers approximately

Production Support Areas: Set and Prop Storage Hair and Makeup Room Wardrobe Room Supporting Artist’s Room Additional Office Space Canteen Space Toilet Facilities On-site Security

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A production village for the BBC located on former industrial land in Cardiff

The BBC Studios is a 3.6ha production village situated in Roath Basin, a 20ha area of former industrial land in Cardiff.

The scheme consists of a 260m long office block and eight studio facilities with outdoor filming spaces.

The façade, developed by FAT, uses motifs referencing the dock’s warehouses, wave forms and Cardiff’s gothic architecture.

• Begun: Jun 2010
• Completed: Sep 2011
• Floor area: 16,356m 2
• Sector: Arts and culture
• Procurement: Design and Build
• Address: Roath Basin, Cardiff, United Kingdom

BBC , Cardiff , Television studio , Wales

Professional Team

• Architect: FAT , Holder Mathias Architects
• Client: Igloo Regeneration Ltd
• Sub-tenant: BBC
• CDM coordinator: EC Harris
• Landscape architect: LDA Design
• Project manager: Davis Langdon
• Planning consultant: WYG Planning & Design
• Quantity surveyor: Gardiner & Theobald
• Independent measuring surveyor: King Sturge
• Structural engineer: Bay Associates
• Services engineer: Arup
• Breeam assessor: Arup
• Main contractor: Vinci Construction

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Elektrostal

Elektrostal Localisation : Country Russia , Oblast Moscow Oblast . Available Information : Geographical coordinates , Population, Area, Altitude, Weather and Hotel . Nearby cities and villages : Noginsk , Pavlovsky Posad and Staraya Kupavna .

Information

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Elektrostal Demography

Information on the people and the population of Elektrostal.

Elektrostal Geography

Geographic Information regarding City of Elektrostal .

Elektrostal Distance

Distance (in kilometers) between Elektrostal and the biggest cities of Russia.

Elektrostal Map

Locate simply the city of Elektrostal through the card, map and satellite image of the city.

Elektrostal Nearby cities and villages

Elektrostal weather.

Weather forecast for the next coming days and current time of Elektrostal.

Elektrostal Sunrise and sunset

Find below the times of sunrise and sunset calculated 7 days to Elektrostal.

Elektrostal Hotel

Our team has selected for you a list of hotel in Elektrostal classified by value for money. Book your hotel room at the best price.

Elektrostal Nearby

Below is a list of activities and point of interest in Elektrostal and its surroundings.

Elektrostal Page

• Information /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#info
• Demography /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#demo
• Geography /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#geo
• Distance /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#dist1
• Map /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#map
• Nearby cities and villages /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#dist2
• Weather /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#weather
• Sunrise and sunset /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#sun
• Hotel /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#hotel
• Nearby /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#around
• Page /Russian-Federation--Moscow-Oblast--Elektrostal#page
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