Rachel Crooks, who is a 2023 DipArch graduate from the MSA’s Stage 5 course, has been awarded the RIAS Rowand Anderson Silver Medal for Best 5th Year Student.
The Royal Incorporated Architects of Scotland Awards, in tandem with Architecture & Design Scotland, bring together the five schools of architecture in Scotland to celebrate the continuing high standards of Scottish architecture.
As part of fifth year architecture’s ‘Ethical City’ conceptual brief, Rachel Crook’s Quarrying the Ruinscape… To bring the Palais to Justice investigates the possibility of re-establishing a circular economy by identifying obsolete buildings and recycling their materials. The project’s focus is to dismantle the Palais De Justice, the Central Law Courts of Brussels, and one of the largest buildings of its kind in the world. An enduring and uncomfortable symbol of Congolese exploitation, over the decades the sprawling structure has slipped into degeneration and redundancy, undergoing constant renovation since1984. Cook’s audacious proposal is to utilise its significant resources and architectural features (the building occupies 279,930 sq ft) and sustainably re-use these in the construction of new buildings across the city on a multitude of smaller scale sites.
“This project shows a convincing approach to urban renewal. It moves from a big presence down to a human scale. Taking the soon-to-be redundant, crumbling ‘Palais de Justice’ in Brussels with a problematic history, this project makes an imaginative and democratic response with the community involved in decisions, by researching gap sites and possibilities, leading to real solutions for reuse”.
Judges Comments
Crook’s project was also highly commended in Architecture and Design Scotland’s Placemaking Awards. The full details of Crook’s scheme can be viewed on the 2023 Graduate Showcase HERE.