HOMERTON COLLEGE’S New Dining Hall has received a prestigious National Award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
The building aims to challenge the image of a traditional Oxbridge dining hall, reflecting Homerton’s values of inclusivity and diversity, and our desire to open Cambridge up to people from a wider range of backgrounds.
The New Dining Hall will now be considered for most coveted architectural prize of all, the Stirling Award for best building of the year. The shortlist will be announced on July 31.
The hall is the venue for formal dinners, including the Black History Month dinner attended by supermodel Naomi Campbell last October, and the Lunar New Year dinner in February this year.
The New Dining Hall was completed in 2022, and was designed by architects Edmund Fowles and Eleanor Hedley, of Feilden Fowles. Designed to be an Arts and Crafts building for the 21st Century, the hall had previously won the RIBA Eastern Region award in May.
Today’s announcement of the RIBA National Award was welcomed by Homerton College’s Principal and Vice-Principal, as a recognition of our mission to achieve inclusive excellence.
Dr Francesca Moore, Vice-Principal of Homerton College, welcomed the news, saying: It is an enormous honour for the Homerton Dining Hall to receive a RIBA National Award and to be recognised alongside so many truly inspirational projects from across the country.
“We are a young(ish) Cambridge college that took a chance on a young architectural practice with big ambition, and an even bigger heart. The result is a building that is a triumph of intelligent design with deep social, cultural, and environmental purpose.
“Homerton’s new dining hall is more than a passive backdrop to delivering inclusive excellence in education; it shows the social power of architecture and the importance of the built environment in driving social change in society.”
Homerton College Principal Lord Simon Woolley, added: “RIBA is 100 percent correct in its evaluation that this architectural masterpiece is emblematic of Homerton’s mission and vision of excellence, diversity, belonging and kindness.”
RIBA’s profile of the New Dining Hall describes it as: “Externally, its highly distinctive, sculptural form has succeeded in providing the ‘emblematic centrepiece’ the college sought as a symbol of its free-thinking character and bold social ambitions.”
Architects Feilden Fowles wrote on the website today: “Many thanks to the jury and our brilliant client for their passion and dedication during this process. Congratulations to the fantastic team involved and everyone who has contributed to the project from competition through to completion – and beyond.”
The New Dining Hall, which opens into the Buttery, features a distinctive V-shaped roof and X-shaped wood beams made from ethically-sourced Spanish sweet chestnut coppice, and locked together with wooden pegs rather than steel bolts. This unique butterfly joint, created by structural engineers Structure Workshop, is characteristic of the low-tech, environmentally aware design. The butterfly joint featured in the 2023 Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibition.
The wood panelling is designed to catch the light and complement the aqueous green panels and pink concrete exterior, to create a friendly and welcoming environment.
The building was created with environmental sustainability in mind and includes mechanical ventilation with heat recovery which uses waste heat from cooking extraction to temper incoming air.