County Hall, Cardiff

The County Hall is the head office of Cardiff Council (formerly South Glamorgan County Council), located beside the disused Bute East Dock in the Atlantic Wharf area of Butetown, Cardiff. The building was designed by J.R.C. Bethell, the County Architect for South Glamorgan, and built 1986-7. This was at a time when the surrounding area consisted mainly of post-industrial dereliction. Hence the construction of the new building has been described in Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan as a "remarkable gesture of faith [by] the South Glamorgan County Council". It is seen as representative of a new form of civic building that does not dominate its surroundings by its size, or formal language, to the extent that it could "even [be] a deliberate...