Thames Christian School & Battersea Chapel wins RIBA National Award 2024
July 2024
Thames Christian School & Battersea Chapel has won a RIBA National Award for 2024.
The project, sited next to Clapham Junction railway station, brings together the Battersea Chapel Baptist Church and the independent co-educational secondary Thames Christian School. The 6-storey, 5,175m2 building provides the church with a new community hall and sanctuary, and allows the school to expand to 400 pupils, of which nearly half are on the SEN register. The project was delivered by executive architects HLM.
The jury said that "The architecture of the new building offers stability and permanence in a physical and psychological context that surely welcomes its assured, confident presence and robust materiality. It exudes a rare civic presence, a calm determination and resolve. Anchoring the energy of the neighbourhood, it is marked by finely composed plans and elevations which have resulted in a powerful, sensitively crafted new building."
They concluded that "It is the antithesis of an architectural culture which is an extension of the entertainment industry. This is an architecture that explores civic character, exemplified by decorum, quietude and presence, achieved through skill, discipline and material."
Read more about the RIBA National Awards here.