“The Architects Series – A documentary on: Alison Brooks Architects” is the 31st instalment of this event organized by THE PLAN for Iris Ceramica Group. The webinar is scheduled for 6 pm (UK BST) on Thursday, September 14, 2023, and will be streamed live from ICG’s Gallery showroom in London. Register on the Iris Ceramica Group digital platform to view the documentary followed by the lecture entitled “Context Is Everything,” presented by Alison Brooks. Before the closing of the event, the Q&A session will be moderated by Hana Nihill, Architecture Awards Manager of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Cultural research, artistic vision, innovative design, and community involvement all come together in the work of Alison Brooks Architects, a studio founded in London in 1996 by Alison Brooks and today recognized as one of the most important in the United Kingdom. Constantly striving to develop new forms of architectural expression, Alison Brooks Architects has received 80 design awards and is the only British firm to have received three of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ most prestigious awards: the Stirling Prize, the Manser Medal, and the Stephen Lawrence Prize.
Originally from Ontario, Alison Brooks studied architecture at the University of Waterloo before moving to the UK in 1988. She sees architecture as a constantly changing social art form, and a means of fostering ongoing creative and cultural dialogue. A visionary architect, a champion of the role of women in architecture, and a driving force behind the resurgence of building craft and the value of timber as an expressive, low-carbon construction technology, Brooks is one of the most awarded and acclaimed architects in the world.
She lectures at institutions in the United States and Britain, participates in international architecture and urban design conferences, and sits on numerous international design competition juries. Since 2018, she has been visiting professor for the Masters in Collective Housing at ETSAM, while in 2023 she was Gensler Visiting Critic at Cornell AAP.
>>> Read the editorial critique Housing / Not housing by Alison Brooks
The studio’s portfolio ranges from urban design to housing, education buildings, private homes, and public buildings for the arts. The studio’s large-scale urban projects include towers at King’s Cross, Tottenham Hale, and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, as well as The Passages, a high-density urban residential development in Surrey, British Columbia, and a sustainable tower in the Quayside neighborhood of Toronto.
Highlights of the firm’s residential projects include the Accordia complex in Cambridge, which won the Stirling Prize in 2008; Newhall Be in Harlow; and three sections of the South Kilburn Estate Regeneration in London. Alison Brooks Architects won the Manser Medal in 2014 for Lens House in London and again in 2021 for Windward House in Gloucestershire. In 2006, the studio was awarded the Stephen Lawrence Prize for Wrap House, also in London.
Recent projects include Cohen Quad Exeter College in Oxford, the main entrance building of Homerton College, and an art gallery in Cambridge.
7 pm (CEST) / 6 pm (UK BST) / 1 pm (US EDT)
Welcome and screening of the documentary
The Architects Series – A documentary on: Alison Brooks Architects
7:30 pm (CEST) / 6:30 pm (UK BST) / 1:30 pm (US EDT)
Lecture entitled Context is everything with Alison Brooks
Followed by Q&A with Hana Nihill, Architecture Awards Manager at Royal Academy of Arts
The course has been submitted for approval by AIA CES (USA) and RIBA CPD (UK) for continuing education credits
The event will be streamed live.
Please refer to the individual images in the gallery to look through the photo credits