RIBA East Awards

The David Attenborough Building at the University of Cambridge triumphed at the RIBA East Awards on 24 May, picking up two awards: the RIBA East Award and the RIBA East Conservation Award.

This innovative project involved the reinvention and complete refurbishment of a 1970s Brutalist icon, transforming it into a collaborative and sustainable 'conservation campus' for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. The building also provides a much-improved home for the University's renowned Museum of Zoology, showcasing it's fin-whale skeleton in a spectacular new entrance hall..

The judge praised the project, describing it as "a first-rate example of how the integrity of a modernist building can be retained, and its future protected, by a clear headed conversion to new, highly appropriate uses".