RIBA Awards 2022

by Cambridge Association of Architects

Stars from the East

Another bumper year in the RIBA East region saw 22 projects shortlisted for awards, with 17 eventually picking up an award. For the third time in a row, one Cambridge building made it through the regional and national awards and onto the shortlist for the Stirling Prize. Cambridge Architecture reviews winners across the region…

**Ely Museum by HAT Projects**
© Philip Vile

Out of an original 48 entries in the East of England, 22 buildings were shortlisted for the RIBA East 2022 Awards, ranging from a small copper-clad home extension in Cambridge to a new youth and participation space at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich.

Shortlisted projects for the RIBA East 2022 awards were assessed by a regional jury with the winning projects announced after the last issue of Cambridge Architecture went to print.

Following online announcements, special awards including Small Project of the Year, the Conservation Award, and Building of the Year were announced at a national event in London. We hope that next year the East Region awards will be rightfully celebrated back in the region, where the projects, clients, contractors, and design teams are based.

**Mere House by Mole Architects**
© Matt Smith

Each year, regional award winners are considered for the highly coveted RIBA National Awards in recognition of their architectural excellence. Of the 29 RIBA National Awards in 2022, just two were from the East Region: Stone Cottage by Haysom Ward Miller Architects, and The New Library for Magdalene College by Níall McLaughlin Architects. As announced in October, The New Library went on to even greater success, winning the RIBA Stirling Prize 2022.

This is the third time in a row a Cambridge building has featured on the Stirling Prize shortlist, and the fourth time the award has been given to a building in the Greater Cambridge area since its establishment 16 years ago, undoubtedly testament to the high standards of design in and around the city.

**Friars by Mole Architects**
© David Butler

**Aldeburgh House by David Walker Architects**
© Tim Soar

**Stone Cottage by Haysom Ward Miller Architects**
© Richard Fraser

**NW2 Participation Building and Theatre Square by WGP Architects**
© Peter Cook

**Civil Engineering Building by Grimshaw with RHP**
© Paul Raftery

The New Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge

**Carefully crafted materials and daylight create naturally contemplative spaces for learning**
© Nick Kane

“The light-filled, warm-wood interior lifts spirit and fosters connections. Students have been gifted a calm, sequence of connected spaces where they, and future generations, will be able to contemplate and congregate, enjoying it both together and apart. This is the epitome of how to build for the long term”

Winning a RIBA East Regional Award, RIBA National Award, and the RIBA Stirling Prize 2022, The New Library for Magdalene College is celebrated for exquisite detailing and robust materials, built to last an estimated 400 years.

A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Níall McLaughlin Architects certainly rose to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning.

Set within the college grounds in Cambridge’s city centre, the new library replaces the cramped study spaces of the adjacent 17th century Grade I listed Pepys Library, and extends the quadrangular arrangement of buildings and courts that have gradually developed from the monastic college site.

Honouring the rich surrounding history, Níall McLaughlin Architects combine load-bearing brick, gabled pitched roofs, windows with tracery and brick chimneys that animate the skyline with contemporary sustainable design elements to create a building that will stand the test of time.

It contrasts openness with intimacy; and deftly achieves the architects’ vision for a structure that gradually rises up towards the light.

**Light plays across every surface including the fine grain of the timber slat roof**
© Nick Kane

The library combines load-bearing brickwork with exquisitely detailed horizontal engineered timber structure toestablish a lofty, surprisingly vertical space with a complex three-dimensional tartan grid.

The grid structure delineates an attractive array of spaces: wide zones for reading rooms and group study, and narrow zones for staircases and bookcases.

The layout also creates a range of study spaces for independent study – with desks set into bay windows, hidden in private niches and within shared zones– enabling students to be tucked away or among peers depending on their inclination.

**Study areas of different scales include a solitary desk overlooking the triple-height space**
© Nick Kane

The library draws on familiar predilections from previous McLaughlin projects – the references to chandling of oak-panelled window assemblies for example, via the housing for Somerville College, Oxford, while also creating something wholly particular within the setting of the wider college. As with the best of the city’s many libraries, a great diversity of spaces to read and work is established, and reflecting its planned longevity, the building feels nicely slack – bookshelves are barely half filled and an extraordinary sense of space pervades, like inhabiting a hugely luxurious treehouse.

The design of this library has been strongly influenced by the requirements to passively light (characterised by the roof lanterns), and naturally ventilate the spaces (characterised by the stack effect ventilation chimneys and openings in the roof). Overall, the project presents exceptional engagement with environmental design principles. The predicted energy performance as a result exceeds the RIBA 2030 benchmark to be one of the best performing buildings of this year’s submissions. The project is also one of the top submissions in terms of whole life carbon considerations, and has addressed the RIBA 2025 benchmark. The structure is dominated by loadbearing brickwork, with horizontalsupport predominantly in engineered timber and to lesser extent as precast lintels and support beams. These material choices have successfully reconciled the existing constraints of the historic college context to deliver a building that will present a long and sustainable service life.

Architect: Níall McLaughlin Architects / Structural engineer: Smith and Wallwork / Project management: Savills / Cost consultant: Gleeds / Acoustic engineer: Max Fordham / Environmental consultant and M&E engineer: Max Fordham / Building control: MLM / Contractor: Cocksedge / Internal joinery: Wedd Joinery

**Garden views link the building to nature and the wider college**
© Nick Kane

“Schemes across the region demonstrate the determination and design skill of all the practices involved, on projects large and small and across all sectors. They also show the enormous value that architects bring to these projects and how their expertise can be used to create better spaces for people to live, work and experience”

Copper House

Architect: Butcher Bayley Architects Structural engineers: Cambridge Architectural Research Building control: 3C Shared Services Contractor: Mark Downs Building Services Award: RIBA East Regional Award

This single-storey extension to a Victorian terrace demonstrates the value a good architect can bring to the simplest project. They ensured the whole house was considered and integrated into a bravura intervention that opens up spaces of the original dwelling into a sequence that supports contemporary family life, with its more complex interactions between work, family, chores and relaxation.

With limited means, the architects have picked the right elements on which to focus, working with the client to select good materials such as the patinated copper cladding and terracotta tiles from the client’s native Italy. The new room opens the house to the garden, bringing the two together in a convincing way.

Copper House implements a fabric-first approach to uplift insulation levels, including the renovated parts. The extension mostly utilised a highly insulated timber frame, while limited use of copper was justified against the offset of using reclaimed bricks.

Stone Cottage

Architect: Haysom Ward Miller Architects Structural engineers: Cambridge Architectural Research Contractor: H. G. Frost Building Contractors Award: RIBA East Regional Award, RIBA National Award, RIBA House of the Year shortlist 2022

The crumbly flint-walled former labourer’s cottage has been retained and new elements sewn onto the original four rooms, opening the house to views of the landscape. A family room runs across the back of the house a half level up from the original cottage’s ground floor, enabling it to look over the neighbouring field. This turns a relatively modest sequence of rooms into a playful and surprising journey through the life of the family.

The project addresses the RIBA 2025 benchmark both with predicted and actual energy use, while the substantial contribution from onsite photovoltaics bettered this performance.

It is commendable for the reclamation and reuse of materials wherever possible. Even internal finishes have low embodied energy, such as bamboo panels and vegetable oil-based plywood. The project demonstrates a meaningful agenda to deliver low carbon habitation.

Friars

Architect: Mole Architects Structural engineers: Conisbee Contractor: F A Valiant & Son Award: RIBA East Regional Award

Something of a rescue project, in addition to sensitively revealing the delights of a characterful Grade II 16th century house, Mole Architects has added a contemporary addition as an effective foil.

The beautifully restored house is now secure in its commanding position over the River Ouse floodplain, while the new extension – similar in volume, but subsidiary and slightly rotated in plan – sits back with well-judged separation. The addition provides a set of spaces – kitchen, garden room and master bedroom – that are complementary but quite different in character from the spaces of the original house.

Designed to Passivhaus standards, the dwelling’s enhanced building fabric ensures a measured energy performance that addresses the RIBA 2025 benchmark. The inclusion of wood fibre insulation is commendable given the restrictions posed by the listing.

Civil Engineering Building

Architects: Grimshaw with RHP (R H Partnership Architects) Services engineering & sustainability consultant: Max Fordham Civil & structural engineering: Smith and Wallwork Façade engineering: Montressor Partners Landscape architects: Turkington Martin Fire engineering: Hoare Lea Civil, structural and fire engineering: Ramboll UK Services engineering: K J Tait Engineers Contractor: SDC Builders Award: RIBA East Regional Award

At the heart of this new facility is the main testing hall, featuring an extraordinary metre-thick concrete testing slab. Wrapped around this and ancillary laboratories is a series of research and collaboration spaces, culminating in a shared canteen and roof garden on the top floor.

The economic and legible structure maintains a regularrepeated framing arrangement with expressed diagonals forming storey-deep trusses rather than carbon-intensivetransfer structures where longer spans are required.

The measured energy performance betters predictions, notable in relation to the high unregulated loads expected with this sort of specialised facility.

The project is most notable for the sustainable engineering and innovation presented. The engineers addressed the onerous superstructure and substructure carbon demands of the brief with extensive research to ensure the delivery of circular design principles, developing a commendable Energy Cost Metric to evaluate whole-life benefits of this approach. Overall, it represents an exemplar project in sustainable engineering that presents a benchmark for future projects to follow.

Ely Museum

Architect: HAT Projects Structural engineers: Momentum Engineering Environmental / M&E engineers: Max Fordham Contractor: R G Carter Project management: Focus Consultants Cost consultant: Gleeds Access consultant: People Friendly Design Exhibition designers: Simon Leach Design Signage and brand design: Igentics Awards: RIBA East Regional Award, Conservation Award

HAT Projects has taken on a badly degraded historic building and lovingly restored and extended it to give new life and purpose to Ely Museum, creating a great resource for the city.

The project starts with modest means – the Bishop of Ely’s former gaol, unsympathetically altered in the 1990s. Asmall amount of National Lottery funding allowed stripping out to reveal what was left of the original fabric. A new entrance, accessed from a sunny planted courtyard, connects the museum to Market Street, while a new addition provides a generous set of spaces including a teaching and community room, which can be accessed independently from the museum for wider use.

The architects have carefully chosen their materials, from re-used boarding saved from the original gaol cells to hand-made gault clay tiles. They are commended for a strong working relationship with the client team and the museum curator. The project exemplifies the rejuvenation of a civic building in a way that provides great community value.

Mere House

Architect: Mole Architects Structural engineers: HA Consulting Environmental and timber frame: Beattie Passive Contractor: Burmor Awards: RIBA East Regional Award, Small Project of the Year

This project was driven by a client with a clear sense of destination – the creation of a place to live after retiring with as little environmental impact as possible: a desire for compact self-sufficiency.

What emerged is an exemplar of the Passivhaus approach: an upside-down arrangement with a first-floor kitchen, living room and bedroom looking out for miles over the surrounding fens, while the ground floor offers more introverted spaces, including a sparebedroom, utility spaces and study. Externally, well-detailed larchboard cladding combined with a butterfly roof and celebratory rainwater pipe offer a light-hearted reference to the agricultural tradition of farm buildings on the edge of fen settlements.

Although the design has not formally attained Passivhaus certification, actual energy use addresses the RIBA 2025 benchmark, while onsite photovoltaics deliver near off-grid operation. The construction demonstrates considerable attention to embodied carbon, utilising timber structurally, in cladding and finishing treatments. Even decorative floor and paint finishes include bio-based alternatives.