AIAUK 2021 Design Awards Winner

June 2021

Magdalene College Library has won in the Professional Practice Medium Sized Projects category at this year’s AIAUK Design Awards. For over 20 years, The American Institute of Architects UK Chapter Excellence in Design Awards programme has proven highly valued by architects as they confer trans-Atlantic recognition for design excellence. Professional entries are sought from UK-based architects or designers, for projects anywhere in the world, and Architects or designers based outside the UK for projects completed in the UK.

Acknowledging that architecture is a corpus of inherited ideas, Alternative Histories invited more than 80 contemporary practices in the UK and Europe to imagine an exchange with architects from the past. Each office was assigned a different drawing from the collection of Drawing Matter. The architects were then tasked with making a model that not only responded to what they saw, but envisioned an alternative future for the original drawing while adhering to the constraints of the project.

Olympic Housing Wins Creativity in Concrete Award

November 2012

The practice has been awarded the BPCF 2012 Creativity in Concrete Award for their treatment of the facade for the Athletes’ Housing Block N15 within the Olympic Village. The precast cladding panels sample fragments of the Elgin Marbles, which were scanned digitally from the British Museum in London. The scans were used to make fibreboard positives using a 5-axis router, which then became the formwork for the latex moulds from which the panels were cast.