AN OXFORD architects' practice has won a national award - and a £9m contract in Cambridge.

Berman Guedes, based in St Clements, won the architectural award from the Galvanisers Association for the new Middle Common Room for graduate students at St John's College.

The award was for best external use of steel and the common room is next door to the acclaimed Thomas White Building, which won several awards for Arup Associates.

Partner Alan Berman said: "This was a relatively small job and it wasn't worth them getting a major national firm. The college visited the work of several local architects and decided on us.

"It was a challenging project because we had to build on top of the college squash courts, which was one reason we used steel. The other was to echo the larger concrete building next to it. It was inappropriate to build with the same materials so we went for a similar but different style."

The £9m warehouses, offices and staff facilities for Cambridge University Press will start to go up early next year. The architects also transformed a former book warehouse into modern publishing offices for the Blackwell group.

The warehouse off Cowley Road, Oxford, was unused following the move to Milton Park of Marston Book Services, now owned by WH Smith.

Now it is used by 55 staff at Blackwell Publishers, who chose to instal a stained-glass window by Sarianne Durie, of Lechlade.

Berman Guedes is also carrying out a similar conversion for Oxford Psychological Publishing.

Story date: Thursday 09 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.