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TWO RIBA NATIONAL AWARD WINS

JULY 2024

The WongAvery Music Gallery for Trinity Hall in Cambridge and Auckland Castle, Tower & Faith Museum have both won RIBA National Awards.

The Auckland Project was founded by philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer. The project is one of a series of urban and historic interventions that seek to preserve the Castle’s heritage, promote Bishop Auckland as a visitor destination and reinvigorate the town. The Castle project by Purcell Architects involved the conservation of the state apartments and domestic rooms, and the provision of new learning, catering, retail and visitor facilities. It sought to increase visitor engagement and bring to life the forgotten story of the Prince Bishops and their role in the nation’s past. In its pivotal location, the form and construction of the Auckland Tower is intended to echo lightweight provisional structures that would once have clustered around Castle walls. It allows people a view into the Castle to understand this previously secluded world. The new Faith Museum extension to the Castle takes the simple form of a barn with certain details developed to project a public representation of a sacred function and provides space for exhibition displays on faith in Britain. The Auckland project has previously been awarded an RIBA North East Building of the Year and North East Conservation Award.

The WongAvery Gallery is a music practice and performance space for Trinity Hall, Cambridge. The new building sits in the centre of Avery Court. The aim of this project was not only to provide a much-needed dedicated space for music practice and performance, but also to rejuvenate Avery Court by relandscaping the court around the new building in a collaboration with Kim Wilkie. It also houses environmentally sensitive musical instruments and the college’s music library. the Jury commented on the project “The jury left the pavilion having absorbed a sense of calm unusual in any building. This is an admirable project in the way it has set out exceptional architectural ambitions and succeeded in seeing them through both design and construction with outstanding rigour and attention to detail.”

PLANNING PERMISSION GRANTED FOR WONG AVERY GALLERY

MAY 2018

Planning permission has been granted for the construction of a small new music practice and performance space for Trinity Hall, Cambridge. The stone-built music practice and recital space will sit in the centre of Avery Court, on the College’s central Cambridge site, adjacent to several listed buildings including the chapels of both Trinity Hall and Clare College. It will be named the Wong Avery Gallery in recognition of its primary funders, the family of the late Dennis Avery, the College Fellow after whom the Court is named. The addition of the new building will greatly improve the College’s offer for students and staff participating in or studying music and enrich the cultural life of the College as a whole.

It is a simple loadbearing construction made of thin stone columns and beams. It is a composition of cubic forms, with a Greek cross plan-form. Performances will take place in the centre, with audience seating in bay windows at the ends of each arm, the walls of which are lined with shelves to store sheet music. Over the crossing, a glazed lantern brings light into the centre of the building and is lined with acoustic shutters which allow the reverbera- tion time of the space to be finely tuned according to the number of musicians and audience members for each rehearsal or performance. As part of the proposals, the court will be landscaped to designs by Kim Wilkie, with a large paved area surrounded by borders filled with predominantly green shrubs and climbing plants.

The project is due to start on site during the academic year 2018 -19.