New £7m building to celebrate Homerton College’s 250th anniversary

The building will be used as a dining hall, to replace the nineteenth-century Great Hall

155 firms competed to design the new buildingFeilden Fowles

by Merlyn Thomas

This article is 9 years old

Friday March 24 2017, 3:33pm

Homerton College will mark its 250th anniversary next year with the construction of a new hall.

The College declared the emerging architectural firm Feilden Fowles as the winner of an competition held to design a £7m new building for the College.

The London-based firm beat 154 other firms competing to win the contract, which attracted nation-wide interest in the architectural sphere.

The competition was held to design a new building, after the college decided that the kitchen servicing the Victorian Great Hall, currently used as a cafeteria and formal dinner venue, could not be expanded or improved to meet future requirements.

The planned interior of the hallFeilden Fowles

The winning firm described their successful concept design as an “Arts and Crafts building for the 21st century”, hoping to convey both formality and familiarity.

Like the extant Great Hall, the new dining hall, which will be able to hold 300 people, will act as a venue for formal dinner events as well as a daily cafeteria.They stated their wish “celebrate the integrity and inherent beauty of materials and craftsmanship” in their plans.

The Great Hall will in future be used for social functions such as concerts, lectures, theatre performances and more intimate dinners.

Professor Geoffrey Ward, the Principal of Homerton College, said the new building would be reflective of the College’s “creative, inclusive community that is ambitious to contribute to the wider society.”

He added, “the opportunity to make an environment that is physically beautiful and that functions elegantly is a rare privilege, and if on a deep level it can also encourage mutuality, the sharing of ideas, then it really has the power to inspire current and future generations.”

Work on the new building is planned to begin in 2018

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