RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award - architeria.eu

WESTMINSER ACADEMY WINS THE RIBA SORRELL FOUNDATION SCHOOLS AWARD

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:

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


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: Alison Banks
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.

CREDITS
Text: The Royal Institute of British Architects
Photography: Tim Soar