Kingsgate Education Building

Location: West Hampstead, London
Client: Kingsgate Workshops Trust
Date: Completed 2005

This art education and exhibition building, set in the yard of a converted warehouse containing artists studios, promotes the Trust and its educational work and provides a generous, light-filled interior whilst maximising the use of a constrained and awkward site.

An appropriate dialogue between new building and existing place is made through a deliberate contrast between the industrial quality of the exterior, with its felt-like, fibre cement cladding, and the calm top lit interior, and through the positioning of windows to frame particular views. 
 
Finalist 'AJ Small Project of the Year'  2006

‘The building is a refreshingly new sight and will stand as a newcomer in between old acquaintances until it, too, has in time acquired patina. The architects were brave enough to dispense with all extras and, as a result, produce a kind of primeval hut, useful and good looking like any well tried tradesman’s tool – a hammer, pliers or a saw’

Architecture & Detail, 2007