owards the end of 2009, Design Engine Architects were approached by Charterhouse, one of the UK’s pre-eminent independent schools, to create what would be a landmark building in a prominent part of the school’s site in Godalming, Surrey.


T


While the project would evolve significantly beyond its initial remit of providing a new chemistry facility into being the first phase of a wider STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) project, somewhat unusually the new building’s striking design would remain largely unaffected, as project architect, Matthew Vowels, explains to ADF. The completed project, with its three distinctive chimneys, “is very close to those original sketches, which is fantastic,” he says.


ADF DECEMBER 2019


“The client’s been very supportive of the architecture, taking a best value approach to design and specification.” This was especially comforting, because creating a contemporary design appropriate for its technical academic speciality, nestled in a prestigious and historic campus of the buildings, was inevitably going to be a challenge. The site includes a variety of Gothic Revival and neo-Gothic buildings designed by architect Philip Charles Hardwick, many with tall chimneys and steeply pitched roofs, which the new building references without pastiche. The practice won the original competition to design the new facility in 2009, beating strong competition including Hopkins, Belsize Architects, Panter Hudspith, and Pringle Richards Sharratt.


COMPLEMENTARY CHALLENGE


Creating a contemporary design appropriate for the building’s technical academic speciality, in a historic campus of buildings, was inevitably a challenge


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