RIBA Regional Awards 2014: Yorkshire
Entrance building, Franklin College, Grimsby
Hodson Architects for Franklin College
Contract £800,000. GIA 424m2
If brick can be ethereal, this building does it, using the material with much delicacy. It’s a small gateway building working as a fragment of a masterplan, but the most important fragment: the way in to the school campus. The old device of a clocktower is revisited with verve and originality as an implied displaced panel of the trabeated facade. That in turn takes its cue from the existing solid 1950s brick buildings with their large Crittall windows. Behind, a generous ETFE-covered courtyard can accommodate exhibitions and college gatherings to parties simply and cheaply.
Sometimes such buildings seem strained or awkward. Not here, where the architectural assurance matches the warm relationship between architect and client.
