Arts & Civic

Sheffield Winter Garden

Sheffield, South Yorkshire

The Winter Garden is the second phase of the Heart of the City project, following the Millennium Galleries. In November 2007, Sheffield's Peace and Winter Gardens beat London's South Bank to gain the Royal Institute of British Architects' Academy of Urbanism "Great Place" Award, as an "outstanding example of how cities can be improved, to make urban spaces as attractive and accessible as possible".

The building was conceived as a covered galleria an integral part of the network of pedestrian streets which together with the Millennium Galleries forms a pedestrian hub linking the Civic, Arts and University quarters of Sheffield – a cultural route through to the city centre. 

Jonathan Glancey, in the Guardian, wrote: “Rooted, in part, in the majestic shopping and promenading galleries threaded through Milan and Naples in the late 19th century, Sheffield's Winter Garden and Millennium Galleries are a generous urban ideal realised in deft modern design by the architects Pringle Richards Sharratt. 

The galleries bring together clear-spirited, clean-cut architecture with high-quality art of every sort, while the Winter Garden is a delightfully Gothic-spirited design that soars above the governing roofline. Here is the sort of covered meeting place British cities have been lacking for so long. This brave and popular new complex of permeable, public city centre buildings may prove to be a template for town and city centres elsewhere in Britain, cold or hot, north or south."

1,570 sqm
£5.5 million
1996
2002