Gabion: Stephen Hodder: the Young Turk grows up 1/3

When architect Stephen Hodder emerged into the limelight a decade ago, we needed him for all kinds of reasons. After the post-modern crisis of the 1980s and the harsh recession that followed, by 1991 we wanted to see new faces, a new, improved modernism, a changing of the guard. Hodder provided hope at a crucial moment. He was good, he had fresh ideas, and he came with two added extras: he was not part of the inbred London architectural scene, and he was not doing all his work overseas. He was from Manchester, and he was building in England. We could scarcely believe our luck.

Hodder's first notable project was relatively tiny and wholly provincial and, on paper, unpromising: a modest municipal swimming pool building at Colne in Lancashire. The town, in enlightened fashion, had held a competition to design it. Hodder entered and won. His premise was that it was possible to make a building of merit for the same budget as the average dumb tin shed. Working with like-minded striplings from the stable of the celebrated structural engineer Tony Hunt, he produced a building of staggered, overlapping segments tethered to a big stake in the ground. It was a young man’s building, a bit crude in places, but it showed verve and promise. It echoed the zig-zag terraces of the old mill town and brought daylight flooding into its colourful interior. In 1992, the building jointly won the Sunday Times/Royal Fine Art Commission Building of the Year Award. The other joint winner happened to be Norman Foster, for the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy. People started to take notice.

Even so, it could have been a one-off, a flash in the pan. Yet today, you find Hodder commanding buzzing offices in both London and Manchester. He is just completing his largest project to date, and by chance it also has swimming pools in it. The Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney, opening this summer, is the Sports Council's flagship Lottery project, marking another competition win for Hodder and his long-time associate, Richard Blackwell. Beneath its highly sophisticated wingspread roof - which is right up there in the architectural premier league along with Norman Foster and Nick Grimshaw - it is a cruciform building, owing plenty to the inspiration of the late Sir Denys Lasdun, architect of the National Theatre. Conceived as a social gathering place as much as a serious sports venue - though it is certainly that too - it is all about the revival of previously run-down inner cities as convivial places to be.