Hawkins\\Brown: It's Your Building

The award-winning architectural practice Hawkins\Brown, founded in 1988, is well-known for its thoughtful, innovative and sustainable new buildings and refurbishments of all types. The practice prides itself on bringing a fresh and collaborative approach, creating places that are well-made, well-used and well-loved. This new book examines 14 of its projects in detail, interspersed with essays on various themes by members of the practice. The book begins with an examination by the eminent architecture journalist Hugh Pearman of the founding, history and approach of Hawkins\Brown, based on personal interviews with the practice’s two founding principals, Roger Hawkins and Russell Brown. A full discussion of the projects follows, each comprehensively illustrated with photographs, plans and renderings. The Bartlett School of Architecture in London had been outgrown by the School; it has been stripped back and reconfigured to create a building that staff and students alike are delighted to use. The Corby Cube is a well-equipped, multi-purpose civic and cultural centre that is beloved of this East Midlands town’s inhabitants. Here East, the repurposing of the Olympic press and broadcast centres in east London into space for creative and digital industries, is an excellent example of collaboration between client, architect and stakeholders. At Hilden Grange Preparatory School in Kent, Hawkins\Brown slotted exemplary new teaching spaces into natural woodland in a sustainable and sympathetic way. The University of East Anglia’s Bob Champion Building is part of the Norwich Medical School’s vision to become a world leader in clinical research and teaching, and was completed in less than a year. Park Hill housing estate in Sheffield has been updated with a charismatic new facade treatment and revitalized flats, taking it from eyesore to icon. Another housing estate, Peabody Burridge Gardens in southwest London, has been rebuilt completely, and is now more pleasant and better int