Futures Forum: Plans for Port Royal and the Eastern Town >>> architecture competition to re-imagine Port Royal >>> winning design chosen >>> Architects' Journal report
Plus lots of ideas for retrofit:
Futures Forum: Plans for Port Royal: 'Alternative ideas as to how the Port Royal area of Sidmouth could be redeveloped'
Futures Forum: Port Royal Repurposed
Futures Forum: Plans for Port Royal and the Sterling architecture prize: staying true to the history and roots of a building with a highly considered and creative project that brings to life a previously-unloved pocket of the town.
The Architect's Journal has just announced its own retrofit awards:
Acanthus Clews’ ’counter-intuitive but brilliant’ reworking of a community hall in a historic Cotswolds village has been named AJ Retrofit of the Year 2017
Sat next to Grade II*-listed 15th-century almshouses and a Grade I-listed 12th-century church in Burford, Oxfordshire, the ’elegant and bold’ £3.2 million project included the revamp of the existing Warwick Hall and the addition of a new two-storey block, housing meeting rooms and a café.
The scheme, which also won the Listed Building of the Year with a budget under £5 million category, was revealed as the overall winner at the annual retrofit ‘Oscars’ ceremony held at the Brewery in London tonight (13 September).
There were also victories for Hawkins\Brown’s overhaul of the Bartlett School of Architecture and BDP’s revamp of Oldham Town Hall in the Higher and Further Education and Leisure categories respectively. Among the other winners were Duggan Morris Architects for its Loom office in Whitechapel, which took home the title of best retrofit of a Listed Building with a value of more than £5 million, and last year’s overall victor AHMM, whose New Scotland Yard scheme scooped the 2017 Office of the Year: over 10,000m² category.
The yearly AJ Retrofit Awards programme is one of the most highly regarded in UK architecture and celebrates the design, engineering and construction excellence that prolongs and improves the life of our built world.
The AJ Retrofit Awards are run in association with
Retrofit of the Year • Cultural • Health and Wellbeing • Higher and Further Education • House under £250,000 • House under £500,000 • House over £500,000 • Housing under £5 million • Housing over £5 million • International • Leisure • Listed Building under £5 million • Listed Building over £5 million • Office under 2,000m² • Office 2,000m² - 10,000m² • Office over 10,000m² • Retail • School
Retrofit of the year
Warwick Hall Community Centre, Acanthus Clews Architects
Photo by Andy Marshall
Making any intervention in a Cotswold village, let alone on a building among Grade II*-listed 15th-century almshouses and a Grade I-listed 12th-century church, is always going to require skill. But this community hall makeover at Burford by Acanthus Clews Architects does so both elegantly and boldly, shifting the main entrance away from the street through the existing Warwick Hall to a route through the graveyard.
It is a counter-intuitive and potentially invasive move, but one that works brilliantly. It restores the original hall’s integrity and provides a generous new entrance, while at the same time creating a new threshold between church and town. This type of decisive design move can only come out of deep knowledge of the existing conditions and close client engagement at every step of the design process.
Photo by Andy Marshall
This sensitive restoration is distinguished by its clever adaptation and reworking, beautiful balance between new build and historic fabric and intelligent choice of materials. It all makes for a design that elegantly exceeds the brief. The result is a building that has not only had new life breathed into it – but has done the same for the community around.
Inside, despite the relatively narrow confines of the site, the sense is of light-filled and easy-flowing spaces to either side: left past the reception to the café and fine new community hall, or right to the original hall, past a neatly inserted new glazed core of vertical circulation and service spaces.
The scheme is exemplary not just in its larger composition, but in the architect’s attention to detail and the high quality of construction. Both the restoration and new work are beautifully executed, with contemporary materials carefully calibrated to complement the existing fabric, which is not over-restored.
Photo by Andy Matthews
Minimising running costs is key to the sustainability of a building like this, and the environmental credentials here are impressive. Heating and cooling are provided by a ground source heat pump tapping into eight 120m-deep boreholes sunk in the garden. With a programme of activities from dance and yoga classes, a crèche, a day centre for the elderly, performances, lectures, concerts, prayer groups and church services, the building seems primed for social sustainability too.
All these uses are supported by vast storage space and a robust business plan exploiting its attraction as a venue for functions such as weddings. It all points to it having a future at the centre of the community for many years to come. This project quietly, confidently and concentratedly covers all the bases of an outstanding retrofit.
AJ Retrofit Awards 2017 winners revealed | News | Architects Journal
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment