Employment Academy | Peter Barber Architects

The Employment Academy is a training and advice centre for long term unemployed people set within ET Hall’s magnificent late Arts & Craft Poor Law Guardian’s building in Camberwell. Peter Barber Architects have extended the building with classrooms, workshops, a café and offices all set out around a beautiful courtyard, which is conceived as the social heart of the building. New buildings are constructed as a patchwork of new and reclaimed brick in a manner which might be called picturesque. Thick walls facing the courtyard incorporate a dramatic inset terrace, window seats and a south facing, brick domed exedra. ET Hall's treatment of the eastern wing of his building is well quirky, all turrets and mini towers… Barber’s scheme adds one extra in the form of a tasty little tower with an extraordinary brick vaulted roof.