School of Engineering

This superbly detailed little box of a building sits next to its more famous cousin, the Gas Engineering Research Station. Its simplicity predates any such approaches by Swiss minimalists of the 1990s, yet would happily sit alongside any such refined artefacts. The rough texture of the precast panels affords a monolithic quality that contrasts against the white panelled cladding of its neighbour. Both are concrete, but an exposed aggregate of broken brown glass gives the School a granite like robustness, only interrupted by the punched apertures of the emergency exits and the circular window that lit the dining room. The single circular shape in the elevation is mimicked in the plan, where a rounded internal room housed an auditorium. The interior planning also includes shallowly inflected walls that gently prise slightly more space around the main entrance and then narrow towards the principal accommodation of the staff canteen and exhibition space. Yates’ ‘earth sculptures’ are subtly at play here too, the brown box sits on top of a glazed band at ground level, but this is disguised by rising grassed mounds forming visual berms that enhance the simplicity of the building’s presence. The short gable walls are made of brown tinted glass in large panels that sit flush with the cladding, reinforcing the clarity of the crisp cuboid form.