Polish Church Wins Hammersmith Society Award

---

But Hammersmith and Fulham Council is left holding Wooden Spoon

The Polish Church in Greenside Road has won a prestigious Hammersmith Society award.

St Andrej Bobola Church won the Society’s new award for Conservation, after its recently restored exterior was deemed to make “a significant contribution to the local area.”

Father Bronislaw Gostomski received the Award at a prize-giving ceremony this week, together with the Chairman of the church council, Artur Lozinski.

The Maggie Centre in Fulham Palace Road, meanwhile, won the Hammersmith Society Environment Award.

Richard Rogers architect Will Wimshurst, who helped design the building, attended the prize-giving ceremony and said: “It has been amazing to be involved with Maggie’s.

“We work just up the road from here. It’s great to work on your own doorstep.  We work all over the world, and it was really, really nice to do something in your backyard.”

The Nancye Goulden Award, which is given for smaller schemes which have improved the local environment in some way, either through a building or landscaping, was awarded to the office/design studio development in Alma Place off Harrow Road

This was described by the judges as a ‘delightful” conversion of a scrap metal garage into a gallery.

Hammersmith Society vice-chairman Tom Ryland urged members to visit this far flung corner of the borough, and said that the view from the gallery was similar to the scene from the famous Ealing comedy ‘The Ladykillers’.

Wooden Spoons for bad buildings and landscaping schemes were awarded to:

• The Thames Water roundabout in Shepherds Bush (for the third time in recent years)
• Hammersmith and Fulham Council for the street banners in King Street, near Hammersmith Broadway and in Fulham Palace Road
• The temporary bus station in Hammersmith Broadway
• The L’Oreal advert in Hammersmith Broadway.

Hammersmith and Fulham Councillor Lucy Ivimy won the dubious accolade of being the first person in the Society’s 19 year history to turn up to accept a ‘Wooden Spoon’ award.

Councillor Ivimy said: “I am mortified to be standing here to accept a wooden spoon. “Banners are a way for the council to communicate with people, which is an extremely difficult thing for a council to do.”

23 May 2008