Common Ground in Sacred Spaces – St Nicholas’ Cathedral

The works comprised internal alterations to provide a more flexible and more community focussed Nave area, including the removal of all pews. New interpretation facilities within the Cathedral were also provided as well as improvements to the connected Cathedral Hall to improve access.

There were further remodelling works to the external areas surrounding the Cathedral, including to the south and east sides to encourage use by the public and enabling events such as markets and open air theatre to be supported.

TGA have developed design information over a number of years in support of this major redevelopment and repurposing of the internal spaces, with underfloor heating being a key part of the internal transformation as the building is almost continually in use and thus can benefit from a relatively slow responding heating system which is able to maintain comfortable conditions throughout the space, efficiently and with little impact on the aesthetics of the space.

Such an approach is also beneficial to the preservation of the porous historic building fabric and compliments the use of air source heat pumps, operating in a bivalent configuration with conventional gas fired boilers, to supply thermal energy whilst lowering carbon emissions.

TGA also provided specialist lighting design input into the replacement and enhancement of the lighting installations within the Cathedral Church taking advantage of recent progress in LED lighting technologies and wireless lighting controls, whilst retaining physical infrastructure installed in earlier projects.