RIBA National Awards

RIBA National Awards are given to buildings across the UK recognised as significant contributions to architecture.

We are absolutely thrilled to be the recipients of a 2018 RIBA National Award for the David Attenborough Building at the University of Cambridge.

The reinvention of a 1970s brutalist icon, and its transformation into the David Attenborough Building has created a light-filled, multi-disciplinary academic and research conservation campus. The RIBA judges praised the project as:

"a first-rate example of how the integrity of a modernist building can be retained and its future protected, by a clear headed conversion to new, highly appropriate uses."

"The repair and restoration of modern classic buildings require so much skill. care and research... At the David Attenborough Building the architects used all the traditional conservation skills but also connected with the spirit and muscularity of the original building."

The refurbished and extended building represents the first phase of a wider masterplan for the New Museums Site to enhance public access to University spaces. The Museum of Zoology, housed within the building, is the trailblazer for similar transformations of important collections on this historic site.