Copperas Hill Student Life and Sports Building, Liverpool John Moores University

by Shepperd Robson

Client Liverpool John Moores University

Award RIBA North West Award 2024

The Copperas Hill building comprises a centre for student life as well as a multi-sports facility. In addition to providing a complex series of well-used spaces for the university, this building stands out for the way its external form and orientation manage to stitch together parts of the city that had previously been disjointed and inaccessible. The colonnade and external landscaping link the central Lime Street Station with the rest of the university campus, the cathedrals, the concert hall, the theatre, and the wider Georgian Quarter of the city.

The Student Life Centre feels welcoming, but also mature and aspirational. The architectural approach of the whole project elegantly combines a highly glazed teaching block with the large and unwieldy form of the sports hall, to create an overall ensemble that feels well-proportioned and appropriately civic.

Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal.

Contractor Morgan Sindall

Acoustic Engineer Sandy Brown Associates

Principal Designer Faithful + Gould

Landscape Architect Gillespies

Structural Engineer Cundall

Environmental / M&E Engineer A&B Engineering

Sustainability Cundall

Gross internal area m² 13,507