New Gate Arts and Culture Centre, Derry

RSUA (Northern Ireland) Award 2025

New Gate Arts and Culture Centre, Derry
McGurk Architects for North West Cultural Partnership

Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 604.5m²

This new arts centre in Northern Ireland’s second city offers a rich variety of activity, performance and exhibition spaces, including administration accommodation and the ubiquitous – though welcome – café. Known to some as Londonderry, to others as Derry, and sometimes as ‘Stroke City’ in reference to the stroke in the middle of the double-barrel title regularly adopted to try to keep everyone content, Derry/Londonderry has also been dubbed ‘The Maiden City’, owing to the fact that the famous walls that define its historic centre were never breached in any battle.

These walls, built between 1613 and 1619, are about one mile in circumference and enclose many of the city’s most significant landmarks. The original four city gateways have evocative names that link them to their particular setting: Ferryquay Gate, Shipquay Gate, Bishop’s Gate and Butcher Gate. Imagination seems to have run dry by the time the first of three additional gateways was built in the 1790s, and it has always been known simply as ‘New Gate’.

Thankfully, imagination and creativity have returned to this part of the city. As one walks from the tightly packed streets of the historic city centre through this gateway, the New Gate Arts and Culture Centre is prominent. It boldly occupies a corner site just outside the walls, announcing that regeneration of the surrounding area is underway, and that community engagement with the arts, and contemporary architecture, are leading the way.

With clever and clearly researched references to the history of the site and the people of the area, this project knits together the old and the new. The historic three-storey house that defined the site’s corner has been retained, restored and reused to provide a series of offices and meeting rooms (plus that café). A new, modern building insert now sits on a previously derelict site along the street, housing the main, multi-purpose rehearsal and performance space, with activity rooms above. 

A full-height circulation space connects them at each level, providing visual links vertically and through the middle of the site and echoing an alleyway which for generations provided a route for workers between the streets. Each of the three forms asserts its identity through a different materiality: painted white render for the former house, an articulated brick facade for the new building, and a dark grey panelled and glazed strip for the circulation space.

Despite the challenges of designing during Covid-19 lockdowns and managing a modest budget through a period of rapidly rising construction costs, the architects and their team have successfully delivered a well-crafted, contemporary piece of architecture. It stands as a new local landmark that respects and energises its setting, opening up to the street and inviting people in.

See the rest of the RIBA RSUA Northern Ireland winners here. And all the RIBA Regional Awards here.

To see the whole RIBA Awards process visit architecture.com.

RIBA Regional Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and VELUX