What happens when Zaha Hadid designs a London school around a 100-metre running track?
In this film, architect Peter Cook explores Ark Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton – Zaha Hadid’s first built project in England and the Stirling Prize–winning “running-track school” that cuts a bright red sprint lane straight through its heart.
Cook unpacks how Hadid takes a tight, ordinary suburban site and turns it into an energetic landscape of zig-zagging forms, bridges and terraces. The building is organised as “schools within a school”, riding over sports pitches and circulation routes so that movement, games and athleticism become the architecture rather than an afterthought.
Inside, twisting corridors, generous natural light and robust materials create a space that feels both tough and optimistic – a place where students can actually run, gather and see the city differently. When the RIBA Stirling Prize jury visited in 2011, they praised its confidence, civic ambition and belief in what a state school could be.
Time Period:
21st century
Professor Sir Peter Cook RA (born 22 October 1936) is an English architect, lecturer and writer on architectural subjects. He was a founder of Archigram, and was knighted in 2007 for his services to architecture and teaching. He is also a Royal Academician and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic. His achievements with Archigram were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2004, when the group was awarded the Royal Gold Medal.
Cook was a director of London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (1970-1972) and chair of architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London (1990–2006), and has been director of Art Net in London and curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. He continues to curate, organise and exhibit around the world: in Seoul, LA, Cyprus, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Design Museum, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,as well as in castles, sheds and garages.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London. Cook's professorships include those of the Royal Academy, University College, London and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt-Main, Germany.
Cook has built in Osaka, Nagoya, Berlin and Madrid. However it was construction of his arts building in 2003, the Kunsthaus Graz (aka 'The Friendly Alien') in Graz, Austria (with Colin Fournier), that brought his work to a wider public. His first building in the UK, a new drawing studio at the Arts University Bournemouth was opened in March 2016.He also built the innovation studio at the Arts University Bournemouth, which was opened by Odile Decq in 2021.