Earlier this week our Chair Stephen Hodder and Associate Nick Wright attended the Building Beauty Awards hosted at Bloomberg European Headquarters in London and presented by Lord Norman Foster.
Our project ‘The Welcome Building – RHS Garden Bridgewater’ was nominated in the Building category alongside Peter Barber’s McGrath Road housing and the Oglesby Centre, Manchester by Stephenson Hamilton Risley Studio.
We are delighted that our project was commended and would like to extend our congratulations to Peter Barber Architects for winning the category with the beautiful McGrath Road housing.
We would also like to congratulate the overall winner, the Tintagel Castle footbridge by Ney & Partners and William Matthews Associates, the Illuminated River, London by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and Leo Villareal in the Public Space category, and to our friends Tonkin Liu for the Tower of Light, Manchester in the Little Gem category.
The Trust commented,
‘Of course we know that successful architecture is about more than surface appearance. There are lots of things a building ought to be, functional and sustainable among them. But the outside of a building is all most of us see of it; so how it presents itself externally is important. When buildings delight those who have to look at them, they add real social value.’
Stephen Hodder said,
‘Rarely is ‘beauty’ discussed in architecture and yet each one of us is affected by the presence or absence of beauty. Thank you to the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust for raising this timely debate’