Marlowe Academy wins RIBA National Award

Marlowe Academy at Ramsgate, designed by BDP, has won an RIBA National Award (22 June 2007) and will now go forward for shortlisting for the UK's most prestigious architectural prize, the Stirling Prize.

The award citation reads "This new Academy replaces the existing failing Ramsgate School. The vast toplit arena with its timber gridshell roof is a grand, almost operatic, space which means the whole school can take part in assemblies or performances. The traditional corridor, with its problems of congestion, inefficiency and bullying has been replaced by a series of lively spaces with real social and educational potential."

Marlowe Academy and another BDP designed school Devonshire School, Blackpool were both presented with RIBA Awards in May of this year in what was to be the shortlist for the National Awards .

Both schools, designed by interdisciplinary teams at BDP, have also been shortlisted for a new award, The RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award.  This is the UK's first prize for excellence in school architecture and is sponsored by the Sorrell Foundation. The prize aims to further raise the standards of design in all new school building by presenting an award to the architects of the best primary or secondary school.  Both Marlowe Academy and Devonshire School are to be visited by the jury panel this week. The inaugural winners will be announced on 6 October at the RIBA Stirling Prize Dinner