Engineering Building, University of Leicester

Some buildings feel like a turning point in architectural history.
The Engineering Building at the University of Leicester is one of them.

Designed by James Stirling and James Gowan and completed in 1963, this radical complex on University Road brought a new energy into post-war British modernism. A tower of labs and offices in red brick and tiles rises beside a low workshop hall, its faceted glass roof twisting at 45 degrees to the plan like a field of industrial prisms.

The building is now Grade II* listed and widely recognised as one of the most important works of late modern architecture in Britain, often described as the first step from high Brutalism towards a more individual, proto-postmodern language. Its jagged rooflights, chamfered tower and “red trilogy” palette have inspired generations of students, architects and photographers who come to see how far a faculty building can go.

I was drawn to the Leicester Engineering Building for its sense of controlled chaos: all those saw-tooth roofs, angled towers and red-clad planes held together in a single, confident composition. Modelling it meant really studying how the tower locks into the lower block, and how the roof geometry cuts across the plan. I worked through several digital iterations to balance the mass of the tower with a simplified fragment of the workshop hall, then refined the casting so the model still catches light in that same sharp, faceted way.

A small concrete fragment of a building that helped change the direction of modern architecture.