The Greenhill Building – Harrow Arts Centre, Harrow

2025 RIBA London Award 

Community and other public
Chris Dyson Architects for Harrow Borough Council
Contract value: £1.8m
GIA: 438m²
Cost per m²: £4,109

The social value and cultural impact this project delivers for the Harrow Arts Centre (HAC) campus and the wider community are truly transformative and belie its modest stature. 

The Greenhill Building has already attracted many new audiences and groups to the HAC site in its short life and raised critical revenue for the centre’s wider initiatives. Providing four new flexible teaching studio spaces, the project will enable the campus to expand its inclusive programme and drive new creative energies into the existing buildings.  

Chris Dyson Architects drew inspiration for this unfussy structure from the agricultural heritage of the former board school’s farm buildings. Simple sawtooth roofs combine with the use of low-cost industrial cladding and non-visual-grade structural timber to produce an appealing and suitably raw character appropriate for a multi-user arts building. 

The internal planning intelligently anticipates future adaptability and is highly flexible and subdivisible if required. Material choices are artfully restrained and inherently robust, which helps withstand the high-impact use that this community building will endure over time.

Externally, a yard and vegetated pond were included to provide attenuation of the internal space and to manage localised flood risk. The building relies on very economical means to deliver its programme. 

It is naturally ventilated and benefits from north-facing windows which bring uniform toplighting to the first-floor studios and reduce solar gain. The low carbon impact of the cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (glulam) structure was also highly commended, and this has contributed to the material efficiency of the project and its low embodied carbon use.

This humble project has been a labour of love for all involved, and the architects are to be applauded for creating such a versatile facility, delivered through the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a high-impact, low-profile building made with very modest means that will have a lasting and significant impact for numerous creative and cultural users in Harrow’s diverse community. 

The project has clearly inspired both users and the client group of councillors, officers and HAC’s longstanding director, who have all worked tirelessly over many years to see it through. The passion and delight shown for the finished buildings is vital, palpable and moving.

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RIBA Regional Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and VELUX