William Street Quarter picked up two awards at last night’s inaugural Offsite Awards, winning Best Use of Concrete and Public Sector Project of the Year. It was also highly commended for Best Hybrid Construction. The new awards highlight outstanding examples of prefabrication and factory-based methods, products, systems and disciplines that contribute to sustainable and cost-effective ways to deliver a better built environment.
Director Paul Monaghan and the Scotland Yard design team joined Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe QPM, Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Stephen Greenhalgh, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, and Jane Bond MBE, Director of Property Services for the Metropolitan Police, to celebrate the new home of the Metropolitan Police reaching its highest point. The refurbished and extended building will feature a multi-use roof pavilion, a new glazed public entrance building and public open spaces.
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Amendments to the Blossom Street Masterplan have been submitted to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and the GLA. The amended design will see the warehouses at No 12-13 Blossom now retained as a separate building along with the existing roofscape and floor levels. These smaller floor plates are aimed at small to medium enterprises and co-working spaces.
St John Bosco School in Battersea was officially opened today by the Most Rev. Peter Smith, Archbishop of Southwark and The Very Rev. Martin Coyle SDB, GBR Salesian Provincial on behalf of the Joint Trustees of St John Bosco College. The blessing ceremony was attended by Paul Monaghan and the design team responsible for the Stirling Prize-winning Burntwood School. St John Bosco School is part of a wider masterplan which includes the Community House for the Salesian monastery of Don Bosco, and the AHMM-designed Cobalt Place residential scheme.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris’ transformation of Burntwood School in south London has won the RIBA Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture.
Announced last night in a televised ceremony at RIBA headquarters, the award was a unanimous decision by the judges, who commented ‘Burntwood School is the clear winner of the 2015 RIBA Stirling Prize. It is the most accomplished of the six shortlisted buildings because it demonstrates the full range of the skills that architects can offer to society. It encompasses great contemporary design and clever reuse of existing buildings as well as superb integration of artwork, landscaping and engineering. It is a genuine collaborative project. There was a wonderful working relationship between the headteacher and the architect: a true partnership of equals.’
In the run-up to the RIBA Stirling Prize announcement next week the BBC is showing short films about each nominee. You can view the Burntwood School film, which includes interviews with Paul Monaghan and with Helen Dorfman, the school’s principal, here. The announcement will be broadcast live from 8pm next Thursday (15 October) on BBC News.
The Angel Building has won the British Council for Offices Test of Time award, given to previous BCO winners that have proven themselves to live up to their original aspirations and intentions. According to judges, Angel ‘is an established benchmark as to how to successfully re-use and reinvent a tired and outdated building. The astute retention of the original structure saved on energy and materials, yet is fully integrated into the final design.’ Find out more and read the full judges’ citation here.
William Street Quarter and Burntwood School have been nominated for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award 2015. Drawn from this year’s British Construction Industry Awards finalists, eligible projects are recognised for their excellence in construction, design and delivery of buildings and civil engineering projects. The winner will be announced on 14 October – find out more here.
Last night Paul Monaghan joined Stirling Prize nominees to tell the story of Burntwood School at the RIBA Stirling Stories 2015 event. Chaired by Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, the event gave each of the nominated architects the opportunity to tell the story of their projects, their inspiration and design process, and what it would mean to win the UK’s most prestigious architecture prize. The winner of the 2015 RIBA Stirling Prize will be announced on Thursday 15 October.
The Library at Willesden Green has celebrated its official opening and was one of the seven AHMM projects to feature in Open House London last weekend. The Library is a new cultural and educational hub for Brent – in addition to new library facilities it also provides training, arts, education and events spaces and a new home for the Brent Museum and Archive. Find out more about visiting the Library here.
Following the planning refusal of the proposed Blossom Street scheme, the design team – led by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris - issued a letter to the Architects’ Journal in an attempt to address the myths surrounding the scheme. You can read it here.
Work is now underway on site at Alconbury Weald Phase 1 Primary school, AHMM’s second intervention at the Alconbury site near Huntingdon. Using a Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) structure, the three wing design spans out to capture three distinct play spaces, with a double height, top lit assembly hall at its heart. The school will be clad with white polished pre-cast concrete and vertically aligned metal cladding, playfully punctured with porthole openings. The school for Cambridgeshire County Council will be a key part of the developing Alconbury Weald community and is due to open in September 2016.
Burntwood School has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture. The school has been chosen by judges from the 37 RIBA National Award winners to be part of the final shortlist for the prize, which is presented to the architects of the building that has made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture over the past year. The winner will be announced on 15 October. Completed in 2014, Burntwood is the fourth AHMM project to make the Stirling shortlist, following Kentish Town Health Centre in 2009, Westminster Academy in 2008 and the Angel Building in 2011.
The Blossom Street project team has created a short film about the architectural, social and economic aspirations behind the masterplan for the area. Featuring interviews with Paul Monaghan and Laura Stephenson, the film explores how the development will provide much-needed space for the tech and creative sectors, particularly for SMEs, while bringing vacant and underused buildings back into active use. Watch the film and find out more here.
Burntwood School, 10 New Burlington Street and Camley Street have won New London Awards, given each year by New London Architecture to the best new and proposed architecture, planning and development in the capital. Chosen by an international jury, over 130 projects across 16 categories were shortlisted for the awards, which were announced at the Guildhall this week.
Burntwood School has won an RIBA National Award, given to buildings across the UK recognised as significant contributions to architecture. Announced this morning (18 June), Burntwood is the only secondary school in London to win a national award this year. The RIBA judges noted the building’s ‘quality, openness, confidence and solidity’ and were particularly impressed by the relationship between the new pre-cast concrete buildings and the 1950s buildings retained on the campus. As a national award winner the project will now be part of the longlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize, which will be announced in October.
For the second year in a row, AHMM has been ranked third in the AJ100 Awards (called the AJ120 Awards this year in celebration of Architects’ Journal’s 120th year). The list of the top 120 architecture practices in the UK, based on the number of fully qualified architects employed, was announced at last night’s ceremony at which the practice also picked up the Clients’ Choice Award.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has won the AJ120 Clients' Choice award for 2015. The Clients' Choice Award is given to practices nominated by more than 300 clients asked who they would most like to work with again or would like to work with in the future.
Burntwood School, William Street Quarter and 10 New Burlington Street have won RIBA London awards, given at a ceremony at the National Theatre last night (18 May). Describing William Street Quarter as ‘clear and simple’, the judges also highly commended ‘exemplary’ 10 New Burlington Street for the special award for sustainability. The three projects join Alconbury Incubator – an East region award winner – in the shortlist for RIBA National awards, which will be announced in June.
Alconbury Weald Club and Alconbury Weald Primary School have been granted planning permission by Huntingdonshire District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council. The two projects are part of a major new mixed-use development located on a former airfield site in Cambridgeshire, and will join our RIBA award winning Alconbury Incubator on the emerging Enterprise Campus at the centre of the new community.
Utilising the same material palette as the Incubator, the Alconbury Weald Club will offer a base for the project’s developer, as well as a café, meeting hall and gym space, within a flexible and robust design that is able to adapt to new uses as the community continues to grow. The three-form entry Alconbury Weald Primary School will be built as three wings, located within extensive external playspace that converge to create a double-height volume, housing the main school hall that will be accessible to the wider neighbourhood out of school hours.
AHMM’s project to redevelop the University of Amsterdam’s Roeterseiland campus has won the World Architecture News Education Award. According to the jury - which included Danish architect Dorte Mandrup, Malcolm Reading of Malcolm Reading Consultants, Stanton Williams’ Paul Williams and Lucy Homer, head of design at Lend Lease – the ‘unique and extraordinary’ project ‘addressed all key elements of the brief and enhanced the learning environment to its full potential’. Chosen from over 100 entries, the final shortlist of six also included school and university buildings in the UK, Germany, the US and Canada.
61 Oxford Street has taken a step closer to completion today with the opening of Zara’s flagship store in the building. The fashion retailer will occupy four floors, with offices and apartments in the upper four floors. Final work on the building, which features an undulating glass façade inspired by London’s historic shopfronts and arcades, continues toward completion in May.
Alconbury Incubator received an RIBA East Region award at a ceremony at Robinson College, Cambridge last night. The project, which provides flexible workspaces for local businesses, has acted as a catalyst for the development of the wider masterplan for Alconbury, a former airfield in Cambridgeshire, where AHMM is currently working on a primary school and club. The Incubator – described by judges as ‘unique and brilliant’ – will now be considered for an RIBA National Award.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has been enjoying more awards acclaim in both the UK and the US in recent weeks. The practice has been awarded the Solomon Andrew Layton Prize by the Central Oklahoma chapter of the American Institute of Architects; given every two years, the award recognises an architectural firm that has distinguished itself over the past five years to the betterment of the profession and community through leadership, vision and design, and will be presented at a ceremony in Oklahoma City on 13 April. Meanwhile, AHMM's work has also been recognised in Property Week's annual awards - the Tea Building has reached the final shortlist of five for 'Most Innovative Development of the Past 20 Years' following a public vote. The winner will be announced on 21 April.
21-31 New Oxford Street, AHMM’s scheme for the redevelopment of the former WC1 mail sorting office in central London for Brockton Capital has been granted planning permission. Prominently located between the districts of Bloomsbury and Covent Garden, the sorting office was built in the 1960s and has been derelict for the last 20 years. Drawing on the industrial scale and character of the building, the proposals for its reinvention include office and retail space, all of the required affordable housing, a new GP surgery and a range of public open spaces including a new publicly accessible roof terrace.
Six of AHMM’s projects have been shortlisted for this year’s RIBA Awards. 10 New Burlington Street, William Street Quarter, Burntwood School, Ark All Saints Academy and Highshore School, and Scape Greenwich have been selected by RIBA London region, while RIBA East has shortlisted Alconbury Incubator. National award winners will be announced in June and considered for the Stirling Prize, for which AHMM has been shortlisted three times.
Burntwood School, Ark All Saints Academy and Waverley School were amongst the projects to be honoured by the longest standing architectural and built environment awards scheme in Europe last week. Burntwood won a National Award while ARK All Saints Academy and Waverley School received commendations at the awards ceremony held on Friday at the Globe Theatre in London. Now in their 56th year, the Civic Trust Awards are given to projects that demonstrate high quality architecture or design, have demonstrated sustainability, are accessible to all users and have made a positive cultural, social or economic contribution to the local community. See the full list of winning and commended projects here.
Morelands Rooftop, home to AHMM’s London office, picked up the BREEAM Award for Office Refurbishment and Fit Out this week. The judges highlighted the team’s approach and commitment to post-occupancy monitoring and its focus on energy and internal environmental data, as well as operational and capital cost information. The Rooftop project received a BREEAM Outstanding accreditation last autumn, one of the highest scoring buildings in London. BREEAM Award winners represent the leading examples of construction projects assessed and certified in the last calendar year, each demonstrating a holistic approach to the environmental aspects of their specification, design, construction and management. 10 New Burlington Street, AHMM’s central London office and retail project for The Crown Estate, was also highly commended.
AHMM’s reinvention of the University of Amsterdam’s Roeterseiland campus has been nominated for the prestigious Amsterdamse Architectuur Prijs, given annually to the best new buildings in the Dutch capital by Arcam, the city’s centre for architecture. The winner will be announced on 20 May – see the full shortlist here.
AHMM team members joined the project team and client TIAA Henderson today to celebrate the launch of the Steward Building, following its completion last week. The building at Bishop’s Court, in the historic east London district of Spitalfields, marks the transition between the distinct streetscapes of the square in front and the fine grain of the surrounding Artillery Lane Conservation Area, and provides a mix of flexible office space on upper floors and smaller-scale retail units at ground.
Earlier this month the Library at Willesden Green celebrated a key milestone in its construction. The AHMM design team along with building contractors Galliford Try joined the Leader and Deputy Mayor of Brent Council at the topping out ceremony. Due for completion this summer, the Library will act as a local landmark and cultural cornerstone within the borough of Brent. The scheme incorporates a much-loved Victorian library building and retained London Plane tree. Once complete, the project will accommodate a library, café, training facilities, arts and function spaces, as well as the Brent Archive and Brent Museum.
New images by Forbes Massie have been released of AHMM’s Blossom Street project. The new views of the project, situated within the Elder Street conservation area near Spitalfields, depict varying levels of retention of a number of existing buildings on the site. Working collaboratively with architects Stanton Williams, Duggan Morris and DSDHA along with landscape architects East for British Land PLC, AHMM has recently submitted the scheme for planning approval. For more information on the project read our project page.
The University of Amsterdam celebrated the official opening of phase one of the redeveloped Roeterseiland Campus last week. Simon Allford spoke alongside UvA’s vice president Professor Hans Amman at the event, which was hosted by UvA’s Director of Real Estate Development Cees van der Wolf in the campus’ new refectory. Students and staff in the Faculty of Economics and Business and Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences have been using the new spaces since September 2014. Meanwhile, work continues apace on phase two, which will provide a new home for the Faculty of Law.
Construction has begun at Barns Road, one of three separate Oxford sites that AHMM has designed around a collective aesthetic for GreenSquare Group and HAB. Once complete, the three sites will delivery two community facilities, retail and workshop spaces and a total of 108 mixed-tenure residential units (68% of which are for social rent). Works at the other two sites – located across town at Dora Carr Close and Westlands Drive – are on schedule to begin early next year.
Adelaide Wharf stars alongside Dame Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman in BBC One’s recent adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot. The 90-minute film is available to view on BBC iplayer until 31 January.