2008

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Westminster Academy wins the RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award

Date:

11 October 2008

Press office contact:

Mina Vadon
T: +44 (0)207 307 3761
E: mina.vadon@inst.riba.org

Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has won the RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award 2008.

The announcement was made on Saturday 11 October at a special awards ceremony for the RIBA Stirling Prize in association with The Architects' Journal at the BT Arena and Convention Centre in Liverpool. The Academy was also shortlisted for this year's Stirling Prize. Lady Frances Sorrell, sponsor of the prize and one of its judges presented a cheque for £5000 to the winners.

The RIBA/Sorrell Foundation Schools Award was presented for the first time in 2007 to the architects of the best RIBA award-winning school - primary or secondary - with the aim of raising the standards of design in all new school building. 

The aim of the Sorrell Foundation is to inspire creativity in young people and to improve the quality of life through good design, joining up public sectors such as education and health with the UK's world-class design community. The winner of the first RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award was The Marlow Academy by BDP.

Speaking about Westminster Academy, Lady Sorrell said:

"The Academy provides a striking presence ringed by the Westway, the railway and high rise local authority estates. The basic organisation is teaching and support spaces around the edges with a large full height court at the centre. The arrangement allows high levels of visibility for both staff and students. The graphic signage contributes a level of spirited corporate identity that traditional schools lack. This is architecture at the highest level, a highly controlled tour de force."

The other shortlisted buildings for the award were:

  1. Oundle School Science by Technology Block Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
  2. Thomas Deacon Academy, Peterborough by Foster + Partners
  3. Bristol Brunel Academy by Wilkinson Eyre Architects
  4. Pinewood Infant School by Hampshire County Council Architecture & Design Services
  5. St Marylebone Church of England School Performing Arts Facility, London by Gumuchdjian Architects

Notes to editors

  1. For images and further information please contact Mina Vadon in the RIBA Press Office on 020 7307 3761 or mina.vadon@inst.riba.org
  2. Full citation follows:

Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre

Harrow Road, London W2

Architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris 

Client: Westminster Academy, Westminster City Council, DCSF and

Exilarch Foundation 

Principal: Smita Bora

Sponsor: Exilarch Foundation, David Dangoor

Lead Consultant,

Structure, Services,

Landscape, Lighting

& FF&E:  Building Design Partnership

Quantity surveyor:  Davis Langdon

Project Manager :  Capita Symonds

Contractor: Galliford Try

Contract Value:  £25m

Date of completion: January 2007

Gross internal area: 13100 sq m

 

The Westminster Academy at the Naim Dangoor Centre demonstrates how a good architect, working with an inspired head and a generous and passionately interested sponsor can combine to improve the educational chances of thousands of young people. The Academy provides a striking presence enclosed by the Westway, the railway and high rise local authority estates. In short the site presents a physical challenge to the architects and an educational challenge to the teaching community.

The Academy was born out of a failing Ofsted school, one of the worst in the community, and a merger with a local junior school. The community was to be drawn from these pre-existing schools which represented a huge number of ethnic groups where the majority did not use English as their primary language. However, its diversity and internationalism were to become core of the academy's identity and a cultural quality they wished to celebrate. The focus of the educational and training programme is business and enterprise and the intention of the architects was to reflect this and to give the building an identity that was more closely related to the commercial community than the institutionalised environment they had come from.

To enter the building you arrive in a generous open area, an inner courtyard that rises up through the building. The basic organisation is teaching and support spaces around the edges with a large full-height court at the centre. Acoustics are dealt with by a series of baffles hung from the ceiling made of cheap DIY store doors, painted in greens and yellows on one side, white on the back. The atrium allows high levels of visibility for both staff and students. This is architecture at the highest level, a high controlled tour de force. Elsewhere other architects have taken the detailed and prescriptive brief of the Academy programme and responded in largely literal ways. AHMM, with no experience of designing secondary schools, have done a meticulous critical analysis of the way such public projects are being procured, have taken the brief apart and responded in a pragmatic and clinically precise way. The staff and governors who were highly involved in the development of core ideas are immensely excited and proud of their building.

  1. The RIBA Stirling Prize in association with The Architects' Journal is the UK's most prestigious architectural prize and is awarded annually to the architects of the building which has made the greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year. The RIBA awards programme was re-organised in 2007 in a pyramid structure.  The RIBA Awards are judged and presented locally and the the RIBA National Awards are judged and presented nationally.  The RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist is selected following further visits to winners of the RIBA National Awards and of RIBA European Awards for buildings in the rest of the EU
  2. From 2008 the RIBA Stirling Prize becomes a 'built or designed in Britain' All RIBA Award winners can be seen at www.architecture.com
  3. The RIBA Awards and RIBA Stirling Prize are managed by the RIBA Trust. The RIBA Trust manages the cultural assets of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), including the internationally recognised collections of the British Architectural Library. It is the UK's national architecture centre, delivering the RIBA Awards and RIBA Stirling Prize (live on Channel 4); the Royal Gold Medal; International and Honorary Fellowships; Architecture Week (with Arts Council England and the Architecture Centre Network); a full programme of lectures, exhibitions, tours and other events; and an education programme
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