Raising the Bar in Brixton: Winner of the 2011 Stirling Prize, this daring charter school aims to bridge architectural and social divides in a regenerating historic neighborhood.
Set back from the road, Zaha Hadid's Evelyn Grace Academy in South London zigzags across its small site with jagged angles of bare concrete, glass, and silver-spray-painted aluminum. The newly founded secondary school—for pupils ranging in age from 11 to 19—is state-funded, but owned and operated by ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), an educational charity organization that contributes additional financial support.
“ARK wanted a grown-up building,” project director Lars Teichmann says of the brief. “Neutral and functional rather than playful and childish.” The energetic, striking result recently won Hadid the Stirling Prize for the second year in a row (last year she won for the MAXXI museum in Rome), beating stiff competition, including David Chipperfield's Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany, and Hopkins' Velodrome for next summer's London Olympics.
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