Civic Trust Award Winner

CIVIC TRUST AWARD WINNER

MARCH 2022

The Civic Trust Awards scheme was established in 1959 to recognise outstanding architecture, planning and design in the built environment.

The longest-standing built environment awards in Europe, their aim is to encourage the best in architecture and environmental design and to recognise projects that offer a positive cultural, social, economic or environmental benefit to their local communities.

The New Library was announced as the Eastern Winner from 160 entries from across the UK and Internationally. The judging panel commented: “The execution of the new library and its relationship with Magdalene College is delightful and appropriate and will be enjoyed by the college for many years to come.”

Fellow and Chairman of Cloverleaf, Professor Tom Spencer (1973) said: “We are so delighted with this Civic Trust Award which confirms what we already know - a brilliant building that works so well for us in so many ways."

NAZRIN SHAH BUILDING – STEELWORK

JULY 2015

Just over two years since our first tentative steps towards imagining what sort of space a new auditorium for Worcester College might possibly be like, we find ourselves enclosed within a spidery sketch, looking up to the trees through a skeletal enclosure of steel. We watched in excitement as our drawings were scribed across the site, first in neon spray paint and little red sticks, later excavated into deep ravines. We pick our way across the lines that had become so familiar on paper and are now concrete obstacles in a muddy field. The reality of this transition only became real as we stood looking across at the steel columns in this picture. They map out the positions of the stone fins that radiate around the curved facade of the new auditorium, with the sloping beams above us silhouetted against the bright July sky marking the future locations of the sculpted folds to the soffit.