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BUILDING |
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City of Westminster College
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DESIGNER |
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DESCRIPTION |
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 The new flagship Campus for City of Westminster College by schmidt hammer lassen architects is designed to support new ways of teaching and learning. The 24,000m2 College, won in a competition in 2006, provides much greater amounts of open learning spaces than typical colleges in the UK and holds state-of-the-art facilities for both students and staff. The building is designed to embrace interaction and diversity and allow students to learn from each other, both formally and informally.
 The College is located in the heart of Central London at Paddington Green on the site of its previous building, an inefficient and failing 1960s block. The building has been designed from the inside-out, responding to the needs of the diverse groups who use the College, as well as taking into account the sensitive local context. It appears as a clean-cut, modern building with a distinct Scandinavian heritage. The building’s simple geometric forms rotate around a terraced atrium, creating a unifying yet flexible organisation.
To support connectivity with the local community, most public functions – including an exhibition area, a theatre and a café – are located adjacent to the main entrance before the security turnstiles. The choice of colours for the building is inspired by its context and by the change of the seasons, whilst the light timber panels lining the interior form a contrast to the exposed concrete surfaces and underline the Scandinavian design heritage.
The building is designed to be sustainable and energy efficient and the overall scheme will have a low maintenance liability, significantly reducing the building’s lifespan costs and carbon footprint. |
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| Project background |
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 The competition brief was for the new City of Westminster College Campus to be an iconic building supporting a shared sense of identity and vision within the College while reaching out to the city and the greater community it serves. Therefore, encouraging diversity of users as well as spaces is the essence of the project. The brief stressed that the primary goal of the new build was to function as a flagship campus. It needed to be an aspirational building with state-of-the-art facilities that would emulate real-life work environments. The facilities and spaces would not only provide the students with excellent academic and vocational skills, but also inspire them. The building also had to support the College’s new approach to teaching and learning, which stresses the importance of learning outside the classroom walls. On a practical level, the client’s motivation for building a new campus was to gather most of the curriculum areas and departments that were spread out over five separate centres under one roof, in a new and modern facility, as the old premises offered insufficient space and needed renovation work. |
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LOCATION |
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| Continent |
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Europe |
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| Nation |
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 United Kingdom |
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| State |
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 England |
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| Region |
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London |
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| County |
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 Greater London |
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| Town |
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 London |
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| Address |
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Paddington Green, Church Yard Walk
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| Website |
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MAP |
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TYPOLOGY |
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Main |
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ARCHITECTURE | Education buildings
Universities, colleges
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Additional |
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ARCHITECTURE | Buildings for cultural activities
Art galleries and exhibition areas
Education buildings
Libraries, archives and documentation centres
Auditorium
Commercial buildings
Bars, cafeterias
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CHRONOLOGY |
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Project |
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2006
project winner of limited competiton
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Realisation |
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2008 - 2010 |
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BIBILIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES |
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| "Give inspiration" in schmidt hammer lassen architects (ed.), Give more, Aedes, Berlin 2012, pp. 28-35 |
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| "City of Westminster College. Schmidt Hammer Lassen", Arkitektur DK 4/2011, august 2011 [Undervisning / Education], pp. 34-39 |
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| Brian Edwards, "Northern soul. Schmidt Hammer Lassen", Architecture Today 216, march 2011, pp. 26-32 |
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CLIENT |
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| City of Westminster College |
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AMOUNT |
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| £ 70,000,000 + VAT (€ 81,000,000 + VAT) |
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DIMENSIONAL
DATA |
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| Surface |
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STRUCTURES |
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LANDSCAPE DESIGN |
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STAFF |
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| Consultant |
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Knight Frank LLP
Stace LLP |
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| General contractor |
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CREDITS |
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Images © schmidt hammer lassen architects
Texts edited by schmidt hammer lassen architects
Courtesy by schmidt hammer lassen architects
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