In the latest of our wayfinding case study article, we take a look at the Wales Millennium Centre in Wales.
Table of Contents
1. About the Wales Millennium Centre
The Wales Millennium Centre was finished in Cardiff Bay in 2004 and is now one of the city’s leading music, dance and live entertainment venues.
At a total cost of over £120 million pounds, this is a major development and one which is at the centre of the regeneration of the bay area.
Cardiff has undergone some dramatic changes in the last twenty years and the Millennium Centre in some ways is symbolic of how the city has evolved.
Before going on to talk about wayfinding in and around the Millennium Centre, it is quite interesting to recently have toured the venue as part of a guided tour and to have learned some quite unique aspects of the design.
As you will see later in this article, wayfinding was clearly not at the forefront of the planning, but the building itself has some interesting features though and, unless you do the tour, you might not be aware that:
- The slates on the front of the building are coloured such that the different colours represent the different coloured layers of rock which represent the various layers you would find on a sea cliff. The slates were actually acquired for free given that a local mine was looking to scrap these slates. After the Millennium Centre was finished, the interest in these slates increased and now would not have been taken for free.
- The whole of the inside of the building has been very carefully designed with the idea of acoustics. Unsurprising perhaps in a modern music venue, but the level of detail to the materials used internally and the way air, for example, is directed in the design of the internal areas, is impressive.
- The glass which is sat behind the lettering on the front of the building (see top photo) can be illuminated and using different colours. Sometimes the colours are used to highlight a specific show or theme.
The attention to detail in the way the building is furnished in terms of materials goes much further and is explained in detail in the tours.
2. Wayfinding Design in the Millennium Centre
Whilst the centre itself has many interesting features and huge amounts of money have gone into the design, it is a huge disappointment to find that wayfinding once again, as in many newly designed buildings, seems to have been an afterthought.
When will architects begin to take wayfinding seriously and realise the importance of this area of design?
It is not unknown for whole buildings to eventually close down, such as what happened to a UK shopping mall a few years ago, which people avoided using because they found it too confusing to find their way around in.
The Millennium Centre is unlikely to meet such a fate, but there are glaring problems with the wayfinding design in the venue, most self-inflicted. Below are some of the problems found.
Building Identification
In an attempt to take an art style direction (understandable in a way, in that this is an arts centre of sorts), those in charge decided to use an inscription on the front of the building which uses a sentence from an old poem by Gwyneth Lewis, with the words:
Creu Gwir fel gwydr o ffwrnais awen
Translated into English, this means “Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration”.
The only problem is that, if you are a new visitor to the bay area, you can be forgiven for not knowing what that “big building over there” is (as someone asked me) and which I also had no idea of, on first visiting.
There is nothing that distinctly signifies that this is the Wales Millennium Centre. This is perhaps not such an issue, but let me continue.
Dance House Wales
Trying to find the ‘Dance house’ in the Wales Millennium Centre of the first time is far from straightforward.
Having bought a glass of wine in the downstairs bar in the centre and then looking for the location of the Dance House was somewhat confusing.
With no signage directing you to the ‘Dance House’ inside the centre, we resorted to asking at reception and were told that we had to go outside in the rain and walk around the outside of the building!
Just a slight oversight in the £120 million pound design.
On asking the tour guide about this recently in the centre, the guide admitted that this was a strange oversight and is a problem sometimes.
The ‘Dance House’ might be its own theatre as part of the main building, but why not design it to be accessible from inside the building?
The other side of this is that, in intermissions, the Dance House does not have suitable facilities for refreshments and enough space for visitors for some events.
Wayfinding Signage
The signage inside the main building overall is quite poor. Many of the standard rules of wayfinding design are ignored and the directions sometimes are very confusing for first-time visitors.
Let there be little doubt that wayfinding has been an afterthought to the materials and artistic side of the venue’s design.
The best way to learn about wayfinding design sometimes is to walk around different travel hubs, tourist attractions or entertainment venues.
In analysing the two signs above, there are many issues including:
- Clutter – signs should be easy to read and as simple as possible. Visitors should not need to spend too much time having to study a sign in order to use it.
- Symbols – should be clear and easy to understand.
- Arrows – and the directions should be clear. Arrows also should never be pointing into text but pointing away from text.
- Font and Icons size – Signage needs to be designed with all users in mind and this includes the partially sighted and those with other vision problems. Seeing a performer on a large stage may not be an issue for a visitor, but trying to identify a minuscule icon on a sign might be a big problem for them.
Many of the signs in the Wales Millennium Centre miserably fail to be designed with any clarity and are confusing.
One aspect of the signage which is quite debatable and politically influenced is the use of the Welsh language. There is much confusion in Wales with two questions:
- Do signs in Wales have to be in Welsh as well as in English?
- Does the Welsh have to be written first or there are no guidelines?
A lot of confusion exists around this issue and this is covered in more detail on Welsh signage requirements.
Suffice to say though that the use of Welsh and English on signs certainly creates a difficulty to efficiently read the signs in the manner in which signs should be read.
Signage in the form of text, as shown on the wall below, is so low that it is difficult to see and then once again, suffers the problem of mostly being in a language that is only used by less than 5% of visitors.
This makes such directional information redundant in its current form.
3. BackStage
What is known in wayfinding as ‘Back-stage’ areas also become interesting areas and need to be effectively designed, but for very different needs?
All of the stage scenery need to be able to get into the building straight from the massive trucks that transport these huge props.
This centre actually has one of the largest and easiest to use backstage areas of any UK performance venue.
4. Design and Use of Space
Apart from fundamental problems in the original design, such as the failure to properly link the Dance House and the main building as discussed earlier, the venue as a whole lacks any real character or heart and the irony is that an antiquated venue such as St David’s Hall in Cardiff city centre actually provides a far greater atmosphere within the meeting or waiting area.
Go to a performance in St David’s Hall and the bar areas are lively and a great focal point for before shows and during intervals.
This atmosphere and focal area simply do not exist in the WMC.
On the contrary, the acoustics and internal theatre design is significantly superior in the WMC, proof that the design efforts have gone into the direct entertainment areas of the venue, with certainly less planning given to the pre-show and mid-show considerations such as wayfinding and customer satisfaction.
Wayfinding Case Study Positives
The venue as a whole does attract some world-class performers and is in a great location for an evening out.
You can find the latest shows in the Wales Millennium Centre at http://www.wmc.org.uk/WhatsOn/. it is only the wayfinding aspect that is under scrutiny here and that a lot of thought has gone into the artistic side of the centre. Want a wayfinding case study of your location?
