Henley Halebrown wins Design of the Year in AJ Architecture Awards 2021

It’s the sheer architectural brio of this building that impresses, its architecture working hard at a number of scales. This is more a small chunk of city than a building. Maxing out its site footprint, it’s all of a piece, tied together by deep red brick façades with columns and dressings in precast concrete, yet composed of two distinct, highly articulated elements. Providing a courtyard primary school and 11-storey, 68-unit block of affordable rent apartments, this is architecture of panache, rather than mere politeness. It's a rare truly mixed-use scheme, too – not the usual anodyne open-sandwich of office-above-retail: but city block as community, rather than commercial asset.

A passive sustainability strategy maximising cross-flow and stack ventilation and passive heating and cooling is enabled through its architectural form, highly airtight and insulated envelope and exposed thermal mass. The concrete frame is fabricated with cement replacements where possible and designed to use a minimum of materials. Operationally, 88.83 per cent of its energy is generated on-site from a combined heat and power plant and PVs.

The new 350-pupil primary school, appropriately corralled off from the street, is focused on a central collegiate courtyard onto which classrooms, the main hall and administrative spaces face, all enjoying excellent daylighting. External covered circulation galleries and a rooftop play space encourage outdoor teaching and play.

The apartment block, faceted around a top-lit central stair lobby, has a celebratory generosity to its common parts, reminiscent of Lubetkin. Its façades project a civic grandeur too, with storeys paired with a double-height order of concrete pilasters. Loggias carved out in the depth between are typical of the articulation of the elevations, seen also at the school’s entrance: a concrete bench for waiting parents and gates with motifs designed by artist Paul Morrison. This occupied, animated edge means this building deftly connects to its surroundings at the scale of the city and of the individual too.