students and, of course, that leads us to the town house by grafton architects. cheering and applause kingston town house. a building with a purpose to make university life open, accessible, collaborative, social. receiving the award for grafton architects, gerard carty. and we have the winner with us now. gerard carty from grafton architects, congratulations. must be a good feeling. it s absolutely astonishing. we re really astounded. we re delighted that we ve won this prize, but particularly for the university, because this is something that s so important that we speak about what university education is about and. one of the extraordinary things about this is the client, as much as anything, isn t it? yeah. because they had this strange vision about inviting in the public, getting
the library and the dance studios together, trying to create a sort of social hub? hm hm, hm hm, exactly. they were looking for a showcase building and what that meant was not that it was a show off building but a building that revealed what was happening inside the building to the passers by, to the outside. do you think that this is about changing the way university education might be? because, i mean, a lot of the students, they are not from university backgrounds. right. their parents didn t go to university, they re often first generation. you know, it s quite inviting, isn t it? it is, absolutely. and i think everybody has to feel at home, no matter whether i suppose that s what struck us about the university is it s so culturally diverse and that we had to think about integrating so many people in many different ways so that they feel comfortable. so if it is a gender or if it s about race or if it s about culture or it s about religion, they all feel like they should belong,
we used delabor slate, which is mined from the quarry just two miles away. 40,000 hand split and hand cut slates have all laid on edge, like after eight mints. one word that sort of encapsulates the building, it s not a very architectural word, but it s for me, it s fun , and it s the kind of project that you see so easily in the faces of users the fun and the enjoyment they are getting from the project, and that s extremely gratifying. and now, ourfinal building, our mosque in cambridge. when i first walked in, i think, when you first enter up the stairs through the car park and you see these sweeping pillars yeah, it s breathtaking, to be honest! the puzzle here was to try to create something that created a sense of awe, spirituality, but didn t
kitchen here, isn t it? yes, that s right, we can even hide the oven if we don t want to look at it. or nice big larders, hiding the mess which is also a bit of a secret door - short cut to our bedroom. oh, it is a door. it is a doorway. come and follow me. wow. takes us past our bathroom. is this a bath? it is a nice big bath. the building is meant to evoke memories of an old stone built nunnery that once stood here, but it does stand out a bit when compared with its brick built neighbours. one member of the local preservation society described
is equally elemental, a study in stone with all the attendant stresses, strains and personal trauma. was there a moment when you thought you d wished you d never started this? of course, yeah. somebody s decided to press a button, it could all be - demolished. we are looking at an apartment building of eight flats and office space underneath the three offices and it is made of limestone, load bearing limestone. limestone, correct. limestone. that s what this building is all about. rediscovering a way of building that doesn t involve the energy hungry furnaces and kilns needed for steel,