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ALISON BROOKS

WORKSHOP LEADER

Alison Brooks is one of the UK’s most highly awarded and internationally acclaimed architects. A native of Guelph, Ontario, she studied architecture at the University of Waterloo before moving to the UK in 1988. Since founding her practice in 1996 she has emerged as one of the UK's most inventive architects with works encompassing urban design and housing, higher education buildings, private houses, and public buildings for the arts. In addition to receiving over 80 awards for design achievement she is the only UK architect to have received all three of the profession's most prestigious architectural awards: the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Manser Medal (twice), and the Stephen Lawrence Prize.

 

Alison Brooks' unique architectural approach springs from invested research into specific geographies, climate and cultures of each project so that her design solutions to emerge as both unique and relevant to the constituencies they serve. This is beautifully exemplified by her recently completed Cohen Quadrangle at Exeter College, Oxford. The first Oxford College to be designed by a female architect, this building demonstrates the conceptual rigour, sculptural quality and ingenious detailing that is her practice trademark.

 

Alison has dedicated much of her professional career to housing design and has completed over 2000 dwellings across the UK, including the Stirling Prize-winning Accordia, Cambridge; Stirling Prize shortlisted Newhall Be, Ely Court and Cadence, King’s Cross. Recent high-profile commissions include mixed-use, high density urban developments in London, Vancouver, and Toronto. In the arts and education sector she is currently designing an Entrance Building for Homerton College and an art gallery in Cambridge. Her cultural projects include the Folkestone Performing Arts Centre, a radiant beacon for Folkestone’s arts communities, and the Smile, her world-famous timber pavilion for the 2016 London Design Festival.

 

Alison has become a public voice for the profession advocating the role of women in architecture, the resurgence of building craft and the value of timber as an expressive, low carbon building technology. In 2012 she was awarded Housing Architect of the Year and Architect of the Year. She was subsequently awarded 2013 AJ Woman Architect of the Year in recognition of her work in housing, regeneration, and education. In 2017 Alison was appointed Fellow and Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts and selected as London Mayor’s Design Advocate. She was also honoured with the 2017 AJ 100 Contribution to the Profession Award. In 2020 her practice was awarded Dezeen Architect of the Year and BD Housing Architect of the Year for the second time. 

 

Alison has served CABE / Design Council as National Design Review Panel Chair for over ten years. She was member of the 2009 Government advisory body The Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, juror for the RIBA Awards group from 2010-2015, the 2011 Stirling Prize and 2010 Lubetkin Prize as well as the 2022 RIBA Gold Medal Selection Committee. 

Teaching has been a consistent thread throughout Alison Brooks’ life in practice. She currently teaches a Master in Collective Housing Studio at ETSAM, Universidad Politecnica of Madrid, and was 2023 Spring 2023 Gensler Visiting Critic at Cornell AAP. In 2018 Alison was appointed as the John T. Dunlop Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard GSD and taught a Diploma School Unit at the Architectural Association Diploma School from 2008-2010. Alison lectures internationally on architecture and urban design and serves on numerous international design competition juries, including the Canada Council jury for the 2023 Venice Biennale Canada Pavilion.

 

Alison was awarded an Alumni Achievement Award by the University of Waterloo in 2014, which was followed by a 2016 Doctorate of Engineering (Hon Causa).

Alison Brooks - Projects

Athena

Architects: Alison Brooks Architects

Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom

Year: 2014 - ongoing

Images/text from: http://www.alisonbrooksarchitects.com

 

By the Architects:

“In authentic experience, ‘home’, whether a house, a village, or a region… is a central point of existence and individual identity from which you look out on the rest of the world.” – Edward Relph

In 2014 Alison Brooks Architects with PTE won a two-stage competition to design 240 new homes with Hill, as part of Cambridge University’s exceptionally ambitious North West Cambridge Development. The 150 hectare urban extension masterplanned by Aecom includes university and market housing, a primary school, research space plus community facilities such as a nursery, a doctors’ surgery, community centre, supermarket and retail units, and open green space. Within the 3.7 hectares of lots M1 & M2, ABA are designing 53 houses and 90 apartments.

 

Durham & Gloucester Court

Architects: Alison Brooks Architects

Location: London, United Kingdom

Year: 2014 - ongoing

Images/text from: http://www.alisonbrooksarchitects.com

 

By the Architects:

Durham & Gloucester Court is a regeneration scheme that extends the typology, scale and language of Alison Brooks Architects’ work in the South Kilburn Estate to establish a consistent urban character, in an area that has suffered from 1960s estate planning. Two mansion blocks embrace a communal garden, creating a family-friendly urban housing typology. A wedge-shaped ‘Garden Villa’ completes the compressed quadrangle, forming a legible urban block.

This 84-dwelling development forms part of the South Kilburn Estate Regeneration Masterplan for the London Borough of Brent. Phase 3 of the Masterplan is led by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios with Alison Brooks Architects and Gort Scott, and landscape by Grants Associates. The team won a competition for a total of 236 new homes. The scheme has received planning consent and is due to commence in autumn 2016.

Herringbone Houses

Architects: Alison Brooks Architects

Location: London, United Kingdom

Year: 2005

Images/text from: http://www.alisonbrooksarchitects.com

 

By the Architects:

Uniquely sited in a backlands plot, overlooking a Wandsworth bowling green, this scheme consists of two 400sqm, urban woodland houses for developer Lyford Investments. Like a Victorian house turned inside out, the building’s herringbone cladding is a traditional timber floor pattern transferred to facades, creating an optical illusion of accordion-like surfaces. Light filled atriums illuminate suspended stairs at the centre of each house; high-ceilinged open-plan spaces interlock with gardens; full basements decrease the footprint but add space.

Accordia Brass Building

Architects: Alison Brooks Architects

Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom

Year: 2011

Images/text from: http://www.alisonbrooksarchitects.com

 

By the Architects:

“This is high-density housing at its very best, demonstrating that volume house-builders can deliver high-quality architecture while improving their own bottom line.” – RIBA Stirling Prize Judges

ABA’s twelve unit apartment building is the ‘turning point’ at the central green of the 400-unit master plan. ABA’s initial instinct was that the building should be crystalline, a shimmering apparition among the trees in contrast to the rigorous orthogonal geometry and brick construction throughout the rest of the site.

Alison Brooks- At MCH

Brooks's MCH Experience 

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