Construction starts on Culture House
Work has started to build Culture House, a world-class cultural facility designed to support the social, environmental and economic sustainability of Sunderland’s city centre.
Our design, for Sunderland City Council, will provide a ‘living room’ for the city, with spaces for meeting, making, playing and learning. The building includes performance and exhibition space, a public café, libraries for children, young people and adults, space for instructed learning, digital creative labs and a roof garden.
These spaces will be supported by an immersive digital infrastructure, that helps blend a range of interactive landscapes alongside more traditional learning environments.
Culture House is backed by Future High Street Funding and is one of several projects progressing as part of Riverside Sunderland, an ambitious masterplan for regeneration that we designed in collaboration with Proctor & Matthews Architects and MawsonKerr Architects.
The site for Culture House is located on the south side of Keel Square. Our design uses a strong sculptural form in brick and masonry to create an identifiable meeting point within the city centre, while referencing the material palette of the surrounding conservation area.
To minimise both embodied and operational carbon, the project uses low-carbon brickwork, robust construction to minimise or eliminate typical replacement cycles and entirely electric servicing systems.
Culture House will be delivered on site by Kier and is expected to complete by summer 2025. Read more about the project here.
