The new building replaces an outdated, temporary building, offering a vibrant new face for the University and a welcoming gateway to Kingston upon Thames. Facilities include a learning resources centre, a covered courtyard, two cafes and a new landscaping scheme across the front of the campus.
Primary responsibilities:
Inviting and open covered entry colonnade promotes street life and activity.
The building was designed heavily in section, enabling high levels of interconnection between floors, where spatial variety and internal vista are key design concepts.
The variant fuctions and programmatic needs of the building are entirely interconnected. A lofty and layered atrium extends vertically through the building, promoting spontaneous interaction between users. This is a fundamental principal of the spatial design, one that is driven by an educational philosophy, and the type of environment that supports it.
The ground floor auditorium is visually connected to the life around it.
We collaborated with an enviromental engineer to design an energy efficient strategy which considered heating, cooling, and rainwater harvesting. By greening the landscaping and providing shading with trees, we mitigated heat accumulation from the thermal mass of the hard exterior surfaces.
Thermal diagrams showing heat dissipation from facade, data which was utilized for the design of the southern brise soleil
