Welcome Centre, Canterbury Cathedral

Aerial view of new Welcome Centre at Canterbury Cathedral

Section through new Welcome Centre at Canterbury Cathedral

Main foyer of new Welcome Centre at Canterbury Cathedral

Community space at new Welcome Centre at Canterbury Cathedral

Plan of new Welcome Centre at Canterbury Cathedral

Welcome Centre, Canterbury Cathedral

To design a new Welcome Centre for Canterbury Cathedral was a rare and exciting opportunity. Located in a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the building will accommodate multi-functional community and exhibition areas, retail space, a ticketing office and support facilities for staff and volunteers. As winners of an invited tender, the interview panel was impressed with how the practice demonstrated a logical process helping the members to question and challenge their own expectations and as a result to further develop the right brief for this complex building.

2019 / £1.4M / 500m²

"We welcome the contemporary, yet well grounded, character of the proposed buildings. In our view particularly successful is the architecture of the community room and entrance, which are expressed as a new and interesting layer of the precinct’s development, but are nonetheless contextual and suitably restrained... The remainder of the building is also close to achieving that elusive modern contextualism necessary in a context where every building in the precincts is an outstanding example of its time."

- Tom Foxall, Historic England