Queen Mary awards honorary fellowship to architect Will Alsop

Professor Will Alsop

18 July 2008

Professor Will Alsop OBE, RA is one of the most prominent architects in the UK with an international reputation for the design of distinctive and controversial modernist buildings characterised by the bold use of colour and unusual forms. At a graduation ceremony today (18 July 2008) he will be made an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London, in recognition of his design of the outstanding Blizard Building at the College’s Whitechapel Campus.

He will be presented at the graduation ceremony by Mike Curtis, Professor of Microbiology and Director of the Institute of Cell and Molecular Science at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

In August 2000, the Alsop Architects in partnership with the laboratory designers, AMEC, were appointed by Queen Mary to design of a new landmark research building for the School of Medicine and Dentistry in Whitechapel. Following a series of detailed workshops with the scientists who would eventually occupy the building, the Alsop team developed a stunning design which met the College’s wish for a research building that offers flexibility of use and opportunities for maximum interaction between different groups in a large open plan environment. Completed in March 2005, the Blizard Building is now home to 400 staff and students involved in cell and molecular science research across a range of clinical disciplines. This high profile project is regarded as a major success both internally and externally to the College and sets a high standard for the future regeneration of the Whitechapel area.

Will Alsop follows a parallel path as an artist, feeling that it is a discipline inseparable from architecture. He was a tutor of sculpture at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and has held many other academic appointments in Europe, Australia and the United States. His paintings and sketches have been exhibited alongside his architectural projects in dedicated exhibitions at the Sir John Soane Museum, the British Pavilion at Venice Biennale amongst others.

Over the last two decades Will Alsop  has been at the forefront of British architecture and has won numerous awards and competitions for his work; including the RIBA Sterling Prize – Building of the Year for Peckham Library (2000) and most recently, and fittingly, the RIBA Education Award and Civic Trust Award (2006) for the Blizard Building here at Queen Mary.

Will Alsop has been Professor of Architecture at the Technical University Vienna since 1995.

Baroness Elaine Murphy of Aldgate in the City of London, who was a member of the Council of Queen Mary from 1998 to 2005, will also receive an Honorary Fellowship today.

Elaine Murphy grew up in Nottingham and went to the University of Manchester Medical School where she qualified in 1971. She has had a long and distinguished career and indeed a long relationship with Queen Mary. Specialising in psychiatry, she was appointed as Foundation Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in 1983, a position she held until 1996. Contemporaneously she was also District General Manager for Lewisham and North Southwark Health Authority, and Personal Advisor to the Chief Medical Officer.
The East End of London owes Baroness Murphy a considerable debt for the way in which she chaired the North East London Strategic Health Authority, where she provided leadership which was pivotal in assisting Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry in its resurgence over the period from 2001 to 2006. She also served as an active member of the Council of Queen Mary from 1998 to 2005, during which she took a special interest in the strategic alliance we enjoy with City University.

Since leaving the College Council, Baroness Murphy has chaired the Council of St George’s, University of London, and has been active in the House of Lords, particularly in developing the legislation around the uses of human tissue and mental health. Further demonstrating her eclectic interests, she has also found the time and energy to complete a PhD at University College London on ‘The administration of insanity in East London, 1800-1870’.

Elaine Murphy was created a crossbench life peer in May 2004.

She will be presented at the ceremony by Professor Sir Nicholas Wright, Warden of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Notes to Editors:

Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary, University of London is one of the UK's leading research-focused higher education institutions with some 15,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Amongst the largest of the colleges of the University of London, Queen Mary’s 3,000 staff deliver world class degree programmes and research across 21 academic departments and institutes, within three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Over 80 per cent of Queen Mary’s research staff work in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001).

The College has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

Queen Mary has an annual turnover of £220 million, research income worth £43 million, and generates employment and output worth over £600 million to the UK economy each year.

Queen Mary, as a member of the 1994 Group of research-focused universities, has made a strategic commitment to the highest quality of research, but also to the best possible educational, cultural and social experience for its students. The College is unique amongst London's universities in being able to offer a completely integrated residential campus, with a 2,000-bed award-winning Student Village on its Mile End campus.

Top