The practice were delighted to receive two awards at the Oxford Presentation Trust Awards earlier this month. The student accommodation for Somerville College and the Bishop Edward King Chapel were both among the winners in the New Buildings category, with the Chapel described by the judges as a “particularly popular award in an extraordinary year.”
Architecture critic Rowan Moore has written a review of the Bishop Edward King Chapel with the title “The Answers to their Prayers” that was published in the Observer Magazine. The article touches on the broader themes of the interpretation and appropriation of religious symbolism in architecture, and in this context praises the paradoxical nature of the chapel; “It is…heavy and light, a bastion and a boat, a wall and a drape. It has presence, but doesn’t dominate.” Describing the form and materiality of the building Moore writes, “The building is crafted and considered: it makes ideas physical: it has intentions and carries them out in its space and matter.”