RIBA has revealed the winners of this year’s Awards which celebrate the very best in architecture across the Northwest.
A multi-award-winning project, the WaterSHED has already won the best school building at the AJ Architecture awards, and it was named by the Royal Institute of British Architects as one of the 10 best new buildings in the Northwest.
An innovative approach to repurposing a dilapidated former school sports hall in Rochdale creates a test-bed for new forms of teaching and social learning. The new facility allows the Watergrove Trust to meet an urgent demand for school places and enables students to learn in more self-directed ways than are possible in the existing school.
In direct response to the client brief, the multidisciplinary team, which included executive architect K2 Architects, took a holistic, low-carbon approach to the refurbishment, minimising alteration of the existing building fabric and maximising offsite construction, standardising panel sizes to reduce waste and using natural materials wherever possible.