UK
Newcastle University is delighted to announce the launch of the Farrell Centre—a new public centre for architecture and cities based in Newcastle, UK. The project has been instigated by renowned architect-planner Sir Terry Farrell who donated 1 million GBP to help create the Farrell Centre in 2018.
Since then, the university has been working on plans to renovate and transform a former late-19th-century department store on the edge of the campus into the Centre’s new home: The Sir Terry Farrell Building. The 4.6 million GPB building project is designed by local architects SPACE and Elliott Architects who have worked in close collaboration with Farrell Centre Director, Owen Hopkins (who was appointed in 2019).
The building project is due to start on site in summer 2021 and will complete in time for the centre’s opening at the end of 2022.
In the meantime, the Centre will begin rolling out a number of programmes, projects and initiatives taking place online or on location around the city and region. More details of these will be announced in coming months.
Background
The Farrell Centre emerges from the belief that the forces shaping the present and future of cities—whether architectural, in the context of planning and public policy, technological and digital, economic and environmental, social and cultural—should be of vital public concern.
It takes inspiration from Sir Terry Farrell’s recommendation that every city should have an “urban room” where citizens can actively engage with their city’s past, present and future, while connecting with and contributing to broader national and international debates around architecture and cities.
The Farrell Centre will be a new type of public institution: part research hub, part civic space, part gallery and museum. It will run exhibition programmes, public talks and debates, organise workshops for schools, young people and community groups, make publications and commission projects.
On its top floor, the Centre will also offer subsidised studio spaces for start-up companies working in the built environment, thus also helping nurture the next generation of architects, planners, artists, designers, filmmakers and other creative professionals.
