BDP's Delia Derbyshire Building at Coventry University wins RIBA West Midlands building of year 2025
BDP celebrates double success as innovative arts and society hub receives prestigious RIBA honours.
BDP’s multidisciplinary design team has won two RIBA West Midlands Awards for its work on the Delia Derbyshire Building at Coventry University College of Arts and Society. The project received a RIBA Regional Award and was named RIBA West Midlands Building of the Year 2025, highlighting the impact of thoughtful design in transforming the university’s city centre campus.
Designed in collaboration between BDP’s Birmingham and Manchester studios, the project involved the sensitive reworking of two existing brutalist buildings, brought together through a bold, contemporary extension. The intervention has created a dynamic new heart for the arts and society college; an open-plan, flexible space that encourages creativity, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary engagement.
In the citation, the RIBA jury praised how the architects “knitted the formally disparate existing buildings together”, recognising the project for its architectural clarity and intelligent reimagining of an underused site.
“Winning both the RIBA Regional Award and Building of the Year is an incredible recognition of the collaborative and multidisciplinary design effort behind this project. The Delia Derbyshire Building is a vibrant mix of didactic, performance, and maker spaces, designed to be flexible and accessible for a diverse range of users. It’s also a standout example of adaptive reuse, turning two previously unwelcoming brutalist structures into a sociable, creative hub that reflects the energy and ambition of Coventry University’s arts community.”
The Delia Derbyshire Building is now in the running for the 2025 RIBA National Awards, which recognise buildings across the UK that set new standards for design excellence and contribute meaningfully to society.
These award wins underscore BDP’s expertise in unlocking the potential of existing buildings through inventive and people-centred design, with the project standing as a benchmark for creative reuse in higher education.
