County Hall built to last

AS the architect who took over the County Hall project team from design stage to completion of stage 1, I can confirm that County Hall was designed to last, not here today and gone tomorrow. It was designed to tolerate the erosion problems of sea spray, rain, wind and sand.

In those days the authority had in-house architects, structural, mechanical and electrical engineers and quantity surveyors to design in detail the building and clerks of works to supervise the quality of the contractors’ construction. Sadly the authority has none of these professions in place and relies on out sourcing all these tasks and other tasks, are there any professional planning officers, any qualified highway engineers, any building control officers?

The design and location of County Hall had been criticised from the beginning and yet the external elements of this building are eye-catching.

The great advantage of this building is that internally it can offer a multipurpose solution, if it is not to be used as an office. The internal partitions

being all lightweight office partitioning. The council chamber though is of unique design with superb acoustic qualities.

So don’t try and knock it down, it will make the demolition of the Weavers Silo Building, now where Sainsburys is, look like kicking down a sand castle. Re-use the building and I remind the authority of other idiotic proposals that were eventually rejected, not necessarily due to my letters to you but to the idiotic content of what was proposed, ie the Linear Park in The Kingsway and then the Digital Bridge link over Oystermouth Road, both potential death traps.

So let County Hall stay and tell the council leader to concentrate on issues. Brian Hughes Newton, Swansea real