A double first for Cambridge

The auditorium at Fitzwilliam College was one of the reasons why it won top prize at this year’s Brick Awards

Architect Allies and Morrison has scooped the BDA’s top Building of the Year award with its impressively cool buildings for Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. The award was made at the culmination of the BDA Brick Awards 2005 gala evening, held on the 2 November at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

Unusually for a Brick Awards winner, Allies and Morrison’s entry comprised two distinct buildings – a rational, three-storey, mauve brick gatehouse and a contrasting creamy buff brick auditorium building with abstract elevational compositions. Both extend Sir Denys Lasdun’s original 1958 masterplan for Fitzwilliam and make a significant contribution to the role of brick in modern architecture. The judges were impressed by the two buildings, which enhance the academic environment and complement an already distinguished line-up of buildings on the campus. The project was also awarded the Best Public Building Award.

Best Private Housing development went to The Matrix in Glasgow by Davis Duncan Architects, a contemporary development of 73 apartments, café–bar and office space that has created a powerful urban landmark. BPTW Partnership’s Pepys Estate in London, an elegant project characterised by its refined detailing, took Best Public Housing Development. And Feilden Clegg Bradley’s central headquarters for the National Trust in Swindon, a building with a strong industrial geometry that was inspired by local railway sheds, took the Best Commercial Building award.