"Homerton College Dining Hall" by David Valinsky, ,

Feilden Fowles’ dining hall for Homerton College in Cambridge is an enigmatic creation, a celebration of bespoke materials and textures that is undoubtedly one of the most significant architectural contributions to an architecturally-rich city in recent years. The rough, board-marked concrete loggia provides a robust base for a cliff-like wall of glassy ceramic that is delicately pleated, absorbing and reflecting the light around it, more so without direct sunlight. From this sharp angle, however, the folds, pleats and sculpted upper level become a rugged monumental mass. All glazing on both levels is all but hidden by deep reveals: extenuated fins to the clerestory and deeply sculpted concrete to the loggia. At blue-hour the material qualities and rich colouring of this sculptural object are brought to the fore, heightened by shooting angle that all but denies the fenestration. Only the lighting implies the inhabitation of this beautiful form.