A project that transformed the heart of King’s Strand campus into a new home for the Department of Engineering has won best Retrofit/Refurbishment project of the year at the 2023 Building Awards.
Since it opened in September 2022, the newly restored Quadrangle has provided students and staff with a newly transformed and restored space at the heart of the Strand campus. The Quad, as it is known, consists of an attractive courtyard and outdoor space beneath which, almost 3,000 square metres have been brought into use over two floors to provide state of the art engineering labs.
The labs have been fully fitted with cutting edge research tools and equipment and designed to position place-based learning and design areas opposite lab spaces, enabling students to move from theory to problem solving and to creating new products. This allows students to theorise and test solutions at the same time, fosters collaboration, making it a hands-on teaching and project working environment. It also encourages interdisciplinary research and teaching by integrating maker spaces with flexible teaching facilities that facilitate interactive learning and hybrid physical/digital teaching.
The Building Awards are a national awards ceremony organised by Building magazine where the best projects are judged across a variety of categories. The Quadrangle Project was judged on design, sustainability, innovation, construction performance, procurement and teamwork, with King’s winning in a category made up of contenders including the Elizabeth Tower, the National Portrait Gallery and St John’s College, Cambridge.
Commissioned by King’s, Hall McKnight architects were tasked with designing and refurbishing the Quad to re-establish a ‘lost axis’ of the original masterplan for the site, whilst knitting together the Grade I-listed King’s Building and the 1950s Quad Building.
The design has also enabled King’s' ambitious sustainability goals, as whilst the original structure of the space was retained, the building façade has been refurbished to upgrade thermal performance and improve daylight. As such, the design also celebrates the exposed surfaces of the original brick-vaulted structure within the space, juxtaposed against the bold helical concrete staircase, thoughtfully highlighting the helix of DNA, the discovery of which was made possible by scientist Rosalind Franklin’s work at King’s in the 1950s in the same building.