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PLANNING GRANTED FOR THE NEW ACADEMIC BUILDING, BEDFORD SCHOOL

OCTOBER 2022

Planning Granted for the New Academic Building, Bedford School

Arriving at the School via the De Parys Avenue Gates. Visualisation depicting the set-back frontage of the proposed New Academic Building, revealing the Main School Building.

We are delighted that Bedford School have been granted planning permission to build their New Academic Building. The new teaching facility, arranged across two-storeys will host 21 classrooms for Maths, Economics and Computer Science along with smaller rooms for group working and seminars. The building is composed as a chain of simple square teaching volumes arranged around a central breakout and circulation concourse. The facades borrow from the organisational principles and neo-gothic elements of the Main School Building - employing deep reveals, gabled roofs, chimneys and a lantern to create generous, bright and airy spaces for teaching and learning. In front of the new building, there will be a new pedestrianised square with delicate trees and lush low-level planting. To the rear, a series of small villa gardens will be combined to form a larger courtyard garden captured by the existing library and New Academic Building, hosting teaching terraces and verdant spaces for socialising and rest.

Image Credit: Pictureplane

WINNER OF THE 2022 STIRLING PRIZE

OCTOBER 2022

Winner of the 2022 Stirling Prize

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named our project The New Library at Magdalene College in Cambridge as the winner of the 26th RIBA Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture.

The New Library contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery and appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled forms of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Conceived as a journey towards the light, three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.

Speaking on behalf of the 2022 RIBA Stirling Prize jury, RIBA President Simon Allford, said:

“A unique setting with a clear purpose – The New Library at Magdalene College is sophisticated, generous, architecture that has been built to last.

Creating a new building that will last at least 400 years is a significant challenge, but one that Niall McLaughlin Architects has risen to with the utmost skill, care and responsibility.”

AJ STIRLING FILM OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE

OCTOBER 2022

AJ Stirling Film of Magdalene College

The Architects' Journal have produced films of the six shortlisted buildings on the lead up to the announcement of this years winner on the 13th October at London's RIBA. The film of the New Library, Magdalene College can be viewed here.