WEST COURT, JESUS COLLEGE WINS RIBA AWARDS
MAY 2018
We are delighted that our project West Court for Jesus College Cambridge has won an RIBA Regional Award and Tom McGlynn was awarded the RIBA East Project Architect of the Year. The project design includes the refurbishment and extension of the Grade II listed Webb Building with new café pavilion and basement bar, and the remodelling and extension of the 1970’s Rank Building fronting Jesus Lane.
The judges commented “This extension to Jesus College manages the difficult trick of feeling entirely old fashioned in its use of hand crafted materials … while remaining entirely modern in its loose geometry, use of daylight and simplicity of forms. Jesus College now offers a sequence of rational, thoughtful spaces that seems inevitable, but we know took a great deal of architectural skill and determination to deliver”
BALLIOL FACADE TRIP
APRIL 2017
We are working on new student residential buildings for Balliol College, Oxford. As part of the detailed design development we have been working with a façade sub-contractor based in Belgium, and recently made a visit to their manufacturing factories. The itinerary for the day – a design workshop, a factory tour and a review of samples. Lots of coffee after an early Eurostar, and a good lunch.
There had been several similar design workshops before; where gathered around the meeting table, sketches were scattered as we questioned the architectural intent and the construction details equally. Brick samples sat in front of us, books piled up with precedents opened, past project drawings and models pulled out for reference. How to compose the language to create a calm and unified façade across the site. The engineers, the architects, the craftsmen who will build the façade.
These sorts of discussion are an aspect of everyday practice, and incredibly valuable part of the process – marrying the conversations of design aspiration with the actual making of. The bricks and mortar that see the architecture delivered from the paper to the physical form.