Newnham College

Northcot Brick scooped the ‘Supreme Award’ for the Dorothy Garrod Building at Newnham College, Cambridge, using a bespoke Newnham Sidgwick handmade blend of bricks. The project also won the ‘Medium Housing Development’ and ‘Craftmanship categories’.

 

This is the third Northcot Brick project to have claimed the coveted top brick industry prize in recent years.

 

Designed by Walters & Cohen Architects, the Dorothy Garrod Building provides new conference facilities, porter’s lodge, student accommodation and social areas, and an impressive new frontage for Cambridge’s oldest and most prestigious women’s college, named after the university’s first female professor.

 

Much-praised by the BDA judges, this beautifully crafted modern extension sits comfortably amongst the historic college buildings designed by Basil Champneys over 100 years earlier, with its distinctive red brick frontage on Sidgwick Avenue echoing the college’s original Queen Anne-style architecture. The elegant design balances solidity with transparency, with generous glazing alternating with full-height brickwork panels where a ‘hit-and-miss’ element weaves seamlessly into the texture, detail and interest of the elevation.

 

Hillary Satchwell, head judge, Brick Awards 2019, said: “The supreme winner, the Dorothy Garrod Building, really impressed the judges who felt it was exceptional in a number of ways. It manages to be an exemplary teaching and research space, as well as student housing; it is a strongly urban and welcoming response to the surrounding streets in this part of Cambridge; and at the same time is an amazing work of carefully considered and expressive brick design and craftsmanship. Quite some achievement.”

 

The detail of the design required high quality materials and highly skilled craftsmanship.  Northcot Brick supplied 165,000 handmade bricks in a bespoke Newnham Sidgwick Blend, which comprised four different types of handmade bricks. In addition, 12 different handmade special shapes (totalling 92,000) made up the intricate panels of ‘hit-and-miss’ brickwork and various areas of detailing that characterise this outstanding building.