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Jesus College
Jesus College
While at Niall McLaughlin Architects, Benni was privileged to work on a range of projects including the renovation of West Court, a Grade II listed building for Jesus College in Cambridge. The project was successful in achieving a building that is both grounded in its place while offering a renewed image of the College onto the city. Benni worked on the scheme from concept stage, supporting the project through planning and across two of its main build stages. He gained experience of working with listed buildings, executing internal and external packages during the renovation of the original building.
In addition, Benni was involved in the design of the new entrance tower on Jesus Lane and supported the design of the facade of its adjacent building with a rhythmic timber insert of bays between existing brick piers. A new 180-seater auditorium was inserted within the extensively remodelled structure as a golden timber-lined box, designed to support the College’s repute as a centre for research. Above, a suite of long and short-term accommodation completes the court with different treatments that respond to a private condition and the opposite urban streetscape.
Project realised by Niall McLaughlin Architects.
Title: Jesus College
Location: Cambridge
Year: 2017
Client: Jesus College
Type: Cultural
Status: Completed
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Beaconsfield Gallery
Beaconsfield Gallery
Our recent investigation into the restoration and expansion of an ambitious gallery in Vauxhall has developed a series of sensitive yet radical solutions that look to expand the programming for a growing exhibition schedule and the continued community engagement initiatives. Working with the rich history of the building and its character, the interventions are intended as simple changes that complement and work sympathetically with the whole.
The project hopes to provide a large extension to the roof with a new connecting stair tower, allowing an accessible route to the upper levels while creating a new figure and beacon to the city. Details including the meaning stair within the large gallery space are made in a vocabulary of thin cast iron metalwork to accentuate these fragments against the existing building, to be clearly read as something new.
Title: Beaconsfield Gallery
Location: London
Year: 2019
Client: Beaconsfield Gallery
Type: Cultural
Status: in progress
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Concéntrico
Concéntrico
The project starts with the act of placing a column in a space to help rationalise and give a new order to the square, as a way of acknowledging the qualities while trying to transform the use of the public realm. This project is a continuation of EBBA’s fascination in the ideas and use of rudimentary architectural elements and our interest in creating simple yet purposeful interventions that explore proportion, form and public space.
The city of Logroño, known for its historic buildings and reputable churches, is part of the trail on the ‘Camino de Santiago’, a pilgrimage route leading from the French border across the north of Spain. A city made up of streets and patios helps to create a sense of urban rooms at different scales, all lined with colonnades that are carried by columns which both define and provide unique edge conditions. This intervention takes the idea of the column as a device, and the understanding of it being integral to the way the spaces in this city are formed, as a starting point.
Responding to quite a complicated site this project gives the square a new order through a very simple intervention. The placement of a single column can help to demarcate and create an enclosure, as well as anchor and make new space around it. This project proposed to transform the square by adding columns by way of offering new configurations that could be re-arranged. The project suggests a playful way of activating the space that could allow the various local festivities to happen within the sea of columns. As a simple gesture, the columns were designed to be reorganised, to create new rooms within this urban room, while at night they transformed into light beacons to give the square a new life and a totally different experience in the city.
Title: Concéntrico
Location: Logroño
Year: 2019
Client: Concéntrico Festival
Type: Cultural
Status: Completed
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Sevenoaks Visitor Centre
Sevenoaks Visitor Centre
Sat within a densely wooded area, EBBA designed a low lying building with three distinct pitched roof structures that spoke to the differing conditions of the site, clad in reclaimed timber from railway sleepers that would allow the new building to blend in with the woodland. Designed as an ‘Open Landscape’, the plan was arranged as a series of slices, allowing views through to the wider reserve. An internal courtyard wrapped by the main gallery would bring nature and wildlife inside the building.
Inspired by the beautiful setting of the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve, the ‘Open Landscape’ would offer new horizontal connections to both faces of the site. The centre would be first and foremost a place for learning and discovery; a revolutionary hub that could foster greater relationships with nature through physical interactions.
The building was developed as a ‘porous’ device that would extend both outwards and upwards offering moments of calmness to draw wildlife in. The clear horizontal breaks in the plan offered framed views through to the reserve beyond, with many opportunities to connect to various aspects of the wildlife at a personal level. The vision for the project took influence from the surroundings and the local vernacular; with the low-lying horizontality of the building and three independent roof-forms used to breakup the mass, making the building meld into its site.
The simplified pitched roof structures in dark weathered wood would harness the building a proud yet modest appearance as a way of recognising the significance of this important landscape. The building would sit elegantly and integrated into the site, providing a powerful image from the various vantage-points on the reserve.
Title: Sevenoaks Visitor Centre
Location: Sevenoaks
Year: 2017
Client: Private
Type: Cultural
Status: Planning granted
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Edouard Malingue
Edouard Malingue
We collaborated with Edouard Malingue gallery from Hong Kong to provide them with a temporary location in London, conceived as a transformative space that will allow three shows and a series of public events. Set in a Grade 1 listed building in Islington, home to the St. Saviour’s Studios, this project space aimed to “create an open dialogue between geographies, mediums and instil a sense of curiosity.” The first of the sequence of projects was a piece called ‘Listen’, a performative installation by conceptual artist Wang Wei. EBBA later supported the design of the group show, curated by Jennifer Ellis and Helen Pheby of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Title: Edouard Malingue Gallery
Location: London
Year: 2019
Client: Edouard Malingue Gallery
Type: Cultural
Status: Completed