Bath Abbey wins RIBA South West & Wessex Conservation Award
23 May 2024
Bath Abbey has won a RIBA South West and Wessex Award 2024 and RIBA South West and Wessex Conservation Award 2024.
The RIBA Judges citation said: "Setting out to improve the experience for worshippers, visitors, and performers, the brief for Bath Abbey’s Footprint Project was incredibly ambitious. As well as repairing and remodelling the interior of the Abbey, it involved creating new learning and music spaces beneath the pedestrian pavements of Kingston Parade. Led by architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, a multidisciplinary team has spent 12 years painstakingly surveying, planning, and implementing a highly complex programme of work. Particular challenges included taking up the Abbey floor, serious surgery to a Georgian terrace opposite, and excavation of a whole street in between.
Perhaps the project’s most radical aspect is the new underfloor heating system, supplied with geothermal heat from beneath the city, and contributing to the Church of England’s target to achieve net-zero by 2030."