STUART A JOHNSON CONSULTING LIMITED
The Sainsbury Laboratory - Cambridge
The Sainsbury Laboratory – University of Cambridge
Laboratory, Cambridge
Winner of the Stirling Prize
Value £82.0 M
Our role - Strategic project managers as well as representatives for the funder The Gatsby Charitable Foundation
Team - Stanton Williams with Arup, AKT II, Gardiner & Theobald, Hannah-Reed, University of Cambridge Estate Management and Kier
All Images courtesy of Hélène Binet
Sainsbury Laboratory wins the Stirling Prize
Stanton Williams' Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge has won for UK's most prestigious architecture prize. Stuart A Johnson Consulting was the strategic project manager as well as the representative for the funders - The Gatsby Charitable Foundation
The Stirling Prize is awarded to the project built or designed in Britain "which has made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture in the past year". The shortlist of six projects is drawn from the fifty British projects and nine international projects which received RIBA National Awards this year.
Judge Joanna van Heyningen said the laboratory was a "sublime piece of calm, beautiful architecture"
"The winner of the Stirling Prize is … an exceptionally nice building, thoughtfully planned, well-detailed and beautifully constructed in fine stone, timber and concrete, that has benefited from a sympathetic client and a good budget. It is a place for botanical research at a high level, designed to lure the best scientists by creating a delightful environment. So cutting corners was not wanted" Rowan Moore - The Observer
RIBA comments: "This building is an exciting new typology, with spaces for research juxtaposed with those for education; the private and the public; the highly-technological nurture of nature with the simple enjoyment of an extended botanic garden."
Interview with Architects on youtube
News: Financial Times Weekend 2-3 May 2015
From cloisters and quads to tutorial pods
Designers are rethinking lecture halls and the spaces around them, writes Nicola Davison
Stanton Williams’ Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge won the RIBA Stirling prize in 2012. In the university’s working botanical garden, the laboratory is an elegant but functional limestone building with giant glazed windows connecting the garden to the labs. Stirling judge Joanna van Heyningen described it as “the lifting of a building type that could have been utilitarian into . . . a sublime piece of calm and beautiful architecture”.
Stuart A Johnson Consulting are proud to have been the Strategic Project Managers for the successful delivery of this multi-award winning building.
Thanks to Stuart Johnson, the Strategic Project Manager, who brought it in on time and on budget.
David Sainsbury
Stuart Johnson provided overall strategic management of this complex project from start to finish. It was a pleasure to work with him. I never worried about anything that Stuart was managing: he had it covered, faultlessly.
Project adviser to the Gatsby Charitable Foundation