Well this is a treat. A new building that is serious and responsible – the Keir Starmer virtues, you could say; adjectives that might be synonyms for dull – that is also sumptuous and surprising, that takes delight in the things that architecture is made of, in materials, space, light and craft. Which is a touch strange and wilful. That takes the risk of looking weird and is rewarded with being beautiful.
This is the new dining hall of Homerton College, Cambridge, built by Barnes Construction of Suffolk and designed by Feilden Fowles – Fergus Feilden and Edmund Fowles – under-40-year-old architects with several accomplished works to their name, in particular in historic and sensitive settings such as Carlisle Cathedral and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. They have sometimes looked as if they were becoming an unimpeachably safe and careful practice of a kind that this country periodically produces. This building, though, is bold.
