As we enter the widely heralded ‘age of austerity’, the past decade of affluence is already being decribed as a wasted opportunity for quality architecture. But this is just part of the picture. The Blueprint team has travelled across Britain to revisit the most significant buildings completed since 2000. Our final selection of 10 tells the alternative stories of contemporary British architecture
Evelyn Grace Academy
Zaha Hadid Architects
London 2010
Zaha Hadid has built a reputation on exceptional buildings. Not just in terms of quality, but in terms of status. The Evelyn Grace Academy is as exceptional as schools get. It is also a fascinating contradiction. It cost £32m, sponsored by the trust ARK, yet it serves a difficult catchment area in south London. The school is part of the Blairite concept of city academies, created to bring educational excellence into problem areas.
The 2000s saw the architect’s role as master builder was further circumscribed by a bureaucratic system. The Latham Report of 1994 sought to clarify relationships in the UK’s construction industry and became the basis for increased collaboration between architects and other consultants. In the USA, where this process was also well under way, Frank Gehry created ‘organization of the artist’ – whereby single prestige projects would stand apart from these rules.
At the beginning of the decade, Hadid was known for experimental projects like the Vitra Fire station in Weil Am Rhein. Her reputation as too avant-garde for the UK was exacerbated by the collapse of such signature projects as the Cardiff Bay Opera House and the Architecture Foundation. By the end of the decade though, she has arguably become Britain’s premier architect, and is delivering stunning buildings within the restrictive design-and-build contract – including the Riverside Museum in Glasgow and the Olympics Aquatic Centre.
With its interlocking, snaking volumes, Evelyn Grace is similar in plan and detail to the MAXXI Museum in Rome (a deserved winner of the 2010 Stirling Prize). It’s the differences between the two projects that are so revealing about Hadid’s versatility as an architect and make her work so constantly fascinating.
In Rome, the dynamic forms knit together an area of the city undergoing development. In Brixton, the intersecting volumes provide internal organisation of the four-storey Evelyn Grace Academy, rather than urban planning. The volumes allow for wide corridors that prevent congestion between lessons; they also establish a network of varied teaching and performance spaces.
It would be wrong to think of the athletics track, which slices through the centre of the site, as a gimmick. Not only does it provide a moment of real, dramatic chutzpah, it presents the school with an identity, enforces its specialism in sport, and focuses the whole institution around a symbol of achievement. Its presence means that the lack of a single, large hall, to accommodate the entire school community at once, matters far less. Indeed, other academies make a somewhat pointless virtue of being instantly legible. Evelyn Grace prioritises the students’ personal journeys rather than their role in an institution.
Penoyre and Prasad’s Wren Academy, for example, was delivered on £18.5m. Whereas its design is dominated by a vast atrium, the Evelyn Grace is a sinewy series of corridors, unified by the architecture.
At the Hackney City Academy by Studio E Architects, it is possible for the headmaster to look into six classrooms across two floors from a single vantage point. This might make parents feel like their children are safe, but it places little trust in the pupils and even less in the teachers. Although there are numerous CCTV cameras, Hadid’s 10,745 sq m academy does not feel as if it’s under constant surveillance The architecture of the Evelyn Grace Academy is dramatic and expansive, but it is also occasionally intricate. The building meets the young people of Brixton half way and refuses to patronise them. This is – sadly – an exception, but all schools should be this good.
