College of Arts & Society, Coventry University

2025 RIBA West Midlands Award 
2025 RIBA West Midlands Building of the Year sponsored by EH Smith

College of the Arts & Society, Coventry University, Coventry
BDP for Coventry University

Contract value: £43m
GIA: 17,605m²
Cost per m²: £2,440

One simple move can reap many benefits. Infilling a courtyard between three 1960s brutalist buildings with a new social space for the College of the Arts and Society has knitted the formerly disparate existing buildings together and connected the college to the city. This new ‘heart’ embodies four key ideas that drive the transformation: integrate, collaborate, connect and showcase.

The College of Arts and Society is home to a wonderful range of programmes, including automotive design, architecture, fine art, interior design, games, film, photography and immersive and digital media. This amazing multidisciplinary mix is celebrated through three strategies that successfully promote interdisciplinary collaboration: organising the plan by function not discipline; shared working and social spaces (hubs); and visual connection throughout.

This project delivers outstanding value for the client. Architect BDP has listened to the university and given it what it needs. The client’s visible excitement as they showed the jury around, describing how much the building delivers and how well it works for them, was immensely enjoyable.

Nearly 80 per cent of the original buildings are retained, embracing longevity, reducing carbon emissions and connecting to history. A ‘less is more’ light-touch refurbishment provides what is necessary for the rooms to function well: acoustics, artificial and natural light, power and, most importantly, generosity of space. Every space is neat, tidy, well-organised and functional, and the architecture is refreshingly direct.

In the new building, connections to history through narrative enrich the design in a lovely way. Internal linings and external cladding have a pattern based on Jacquard loom punch cards used to make the Coventry Town Ribbon, designed by the Coventry School of Design for the Great Exhibition of 1851. And the new building is named after Delia Derbyshire, the Coventry-born composer best known for her electronic arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune.

The project is forward-thinking. Being organised by function, not discipline, enables the building to respond to and accommodate future changes in education and curriculum. Efficient organisation, clear layers of public to private space, and large flexible rooms enable easy adaptation.

Taking advantage of the new masterplan for Coventry University, which creates a new direct connection to Basil Spence’s magnificent Coventry Cathedral, this project links the heart of the city with the heart of the college.

The new interior courtyard is open to all, a public room and showcase to the city with events and exhibitions, but also a place to stop for a coffee or pass through. On the exterior, the Delia Derbyshire Building’s facade is a harmonious and contextual composition that responds to the finned facade of the Coventry Cathedral Chapel of Industry and the existing brutalist college buildings to either side. The jury felt the project was highly ambitious in how it achieves so much for the university, yet with a light touch.

View all of our RIBA West Midlands Award winners here, and all our RIBA UK Award winners here.

View the full RIBA UK Awards 2025 process.

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