img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Serjeant Award & SOM Foundation Fellowship

Benjamin Ferns

Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Tutors: Matthew Butcher, Elizabeth Dow, Jonathan Hill


 

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, established in 1603 with Galileo as chair, is relocated to the City of London to provide a  new education system to tackle the Square Mile’s lack of moral purpose.

The Academy is a monochrome mass of libraries and ritualistic lecture spaces set in a landscape to induce physical and metaphysical wandering, meeting and reflection.  Three environments are provided, inspired by the core natural elements of mountain (for isolation and reflection), river (wandering and activity) and valley (gathering).

The use of a monochrome palette within the academy with materials such as Travertine and Basalt increases capacity in the area of the human brain responsible for learning and perception. This offsets the red and gold of the papal robes.

123

Libraries include the Casina di Studio Little House of Study, set in a vertical landscape for wandering. Veneer construction is a metaphor for the ephemeral interpretation of Academy publications. The Casina Della Conoscenza Door of the Little House of Knowledge leads to formal and informal meeting spaces and a scientific experiment fabrication workshop. An Apostolic Auditorium includes a confession pool to ritualistically clear the mind before debate.

Although allegorical to the Vatican, the proposal goes beyond a religious or scientific typology and deliberately refuses an immediate reading.


Return to the main President's Medals page

Latest

Want to save a derelict Victorian pier from the sea, upgrade a 1920s Essex railway station or design an innovation hub for County Antrim? These are the latest architecture contracts and competitions from across the industry

Latest: Save a derelict Victorian pier from the sea

Local practice DLM rebuilds a 1930s changing facility to give La Valette Bathing Pools a welcoming and inclusive building that is backed by the community

DLM has renewed a 1930s changing facility to give La Valette Bathing Pools a welcoming and inclusive building

RH Partnership’s light, bright residential block for the young Cambridge college connects existing buildings and performs for the future

RHP’s residential block brings cohesion to Cambridge college

With the knowledge to create sophisticated designs, Minesh Patel's next task is to find the scale that makes the most of it, while becoming a role model practice for diversity

Several aims lie behind an ambition to grow and work on larger projects

From technical explanations to evocations of mood and experience, architects have used drawings to understand and explain buildings. Enjoy these highlights though time

Highlights of architects' representations of buildings over 400 years