Inside the Carnegie Pavilion

If you’re driving through Headingley, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to drive past the new Carnegie Pavilion without noticing it. Standing proud above a sea of red-brick Victorian terraces, it’s about as bold an architectural statement as you’ll find in Leeds.

The building is spiky, multi-faceted, in what architectural types like to refer to as ‘chamfered’. But even if you’re not a card-carrying member of RIBA, it’s impossible to notice that this is an extremely futuristic building in the heart of suburbia. It is defiantly at odds with its surroundings, which to my mind, is not bad thing. I believe contrast can be just as apposite as harmony when it comes to architecture, and that it’s this startling incongruity that makes it such an arresting and important addition to the Headingley skyline.

I joined the rest of my colleagues in News & Media recently for a tour of the building, guided by Campus Services Manager Louise Hartley. This was my first opportunity to inspect the Carnegie Pavilion at close quarters, and I noticed a number of strategies employed by Alsop Sparch to stop the building overpowering its surroundings. For one thing, it’s sunk below ground level to prevent it towering over nearby houses. The triangular metal panels – which bring to mind the geodesic design of The Rose Bowl - are also coloured a subtle shade of green to match the surrounding trees.



Looking around the light and spacious interior of the pavilion, you begin to appreciate the enormous challenge of effectively designing a building for a joint client brief. The pavilion offers world-class sporting and hospitality amenities, but is also designed to act as a teaching and accommodation space for Leeds Metropolitan.

Although some administrative offices and the ground floor teaching kitchens are for the sole use of Leeds Met, the rest of the pavilion has been designed to offer dual functions. For example, the SKY Sports and radio studios double as staff or student meeting rooms and the 150-seat lecture theatre can be converted into an auditorium for 100 journalists.

I have to confess that watching cricket does not rank highly in my list of priorities. But watching the game in progress from behind the vast expanse of glass screening the viewing gantry, I couldn’t help but be impressed. It’s possible to take in, at a glance, the whole playing field. It was a hot day outside, and the crowd were applauding the cricketers, but inside, it was refreshingly cool, and thanks to a special type of double-glazing (something to do with noise frequencies nullifying each other) we couldn’t hear a thing.

It's easy to understand what the Carnegie Pavilion provokes strong reactions - it's not the kind of building that people feel ambivalent about. But leaving the building, I was convinced that it's valuable both as an economic and cultural tool. The architects, working in partnership with the YCCC and Leeds Metropolitan, have created a building which is already becoming established as an icon, an attempt to put exciting architecture at the heart of the cultural fabric of Leeds. And that, ultimately, can only be a good thing.

But I won't be watching cricket there anytime soon.

Cris Neill.