Case Studies
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A Cambridge Education
Allies and Morrison is the latest architect to interpret and continue Sir Denys Lasdun’s original 1958 master plan for Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. The £8.2m contract completed in 2004 has added two new buildings – a gatehouse and an auditorium – that join a line up of work by Lasdun himself, MacCormack Jamieson Prichard, and van Heynigan and Haward.
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Toxteth’s Technicolour Dreamboat
“When I think back to the original design brief, I think we wanted a big red box, something visible from a long way away,” recalls Toxteth TV board director Nick Stanley. Well it may not be totally red, but Toxteth TV’s new multicoloured HQ in Liverpool is certainly big, boxy and very, very striking. So much so, it has already scooped both the Best Public Building and Building of the Year categories in the BDA’s 2004 Brick Awards.
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Brickwork for Interiors
Brick’s attractive appearance enhances much of our external environment. But it is also used internally to great effect in building types from houses to hotels, sports halls, supermarkets, libraries or civic centres.
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School of Slavonic Studies
Short and Associates’ UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in Bloomsbury is the world’s first application of passive downdraft cooling on a public building in a major city.
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It’s Just, Like, So LA
Ahh, the west coast … West coast USA, that is, California sunshine and palm-fringed beaches – not Weston-Super-Mare’s grey skies and amusement arcades. It is images of the Golden State that CZWG Architects’ Fulham Island in west London evokes – albeit a British take on that style.
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High Culture
The building that is now the Louise T Blouin Institute was originally used by Hooper’s, the coachbuilder to Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Daimler.
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The Secrets Out
If you are into achilleas, salvias, monardas and heleniums, then a visit to the newly refurbished Walled Garden at Scampston Hall will reveal these exotic plants in their full glory. More importantly, it will also provide an opportunity to see a prime example of how brick can form the heart of a contemporary development to help regenerate a historic landscape.
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By the Book
The British Library Centre for Conservation is a new addition to the existing British Library building, adjacent to St Pancras Station in central London. The challenge for architect Long & Kentish was to design a building that complemented the preceding high quality build, while providing a state-of-the-art facility designed to meet the specific technical requirements of book, sound and paper conservation.
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Pallant House Gallery
The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, designed by Long and Kentish in association with Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson, was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries in May 2007.
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Here’s to You, Sloane Robinson
For Rick Mather Architects, the choice of brick as the cladding material for the award-winning Sloane Robinson building was a foregone conclusion. For one thing, it shares a quadrangle at Keble College Oxford with two other distinctive brick structures.
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Church of Our Lady and St Vincent and Parish Centre
The merging of two parishes in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, presented the community with the opportunity to build a new church and parish centre. Westminster Roman Catholic Diocese Trust appointed Francis Weal and Partners as architect in March 2003 but the design was developed with Father Timothy O’Connor and the church building committee.
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BowZed
The BowZed apartment block at Tomlins Grove in east London exploits the benefits of masonry’s thermal mass. Completed in 2004 by Bill Dunster Architects’ ZEDfactory, the four-storey building can store solar heat gains for up to five days in winter. In summer, this time lag means internal temperatures can be up to 10ºC cooler than outside.
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St Pancras International
If you think there aren’t enough specialist brick craftsmen around, then take a look at the work going on at St Pancras International Station in London. There you will see the sort of stunning, intricate brickwork craftsmanship that you might be forgiven for thinking had died with the Victorians.
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No Place Like Home
A pilot housing and community scheme in Dublin, it comprises a 50-bedroom centre providing accommodation and training for 18- to 25-year olds in need of a home. They are what the building’s designer Angela Brady of Brady Mallalieu Architects calls the “hidden homeless” - school-leavers, youngsters who can’t afford their own home and the untrained. Their stay in the centre will be anything from one to a maximum of three years. Being in a sheltered environment while they learn new skills or become better educated is aimed at giving them a good start in life.
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Monastic Minimalism
Every now and then, a project comes along where brickwork not only features externally, but is also the major constituent of the interior. One recent manifestation of this rare breed is an ingenious and spatially complex house completed in April 2005 by Caruso St John Architects.
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Dance City
‘Thermal mass’ as a term may have become over-used lately, but it is one reason why Dance City in Newcastle, completed in December 2005, is such a significant development.
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A Learning Curve
“A fitting landmark for the millennium in the heart of Norwich” was what the brief demanded. Hopkins Architects has achieved this with a dynamic building that has become very popular with the locals in a short space of time.
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In Sympathy
It’s not often one thinks about sustainability when it comes to burial sites, but for mae, a young architectural practice based in north London, this was a component of its brief for the Wilbury Hills Cemetery on the edge of Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire.
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National Trust
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Feilden Clegg Bradley’s striking new £10m central office for the National Trust in Swindon was generated by three principles: to be the most sustainable building possible within the budget; to offer the best possible work environment; and to provide the most appropriate contextual response.