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A New City Interior - The Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University, Whitechapel, London.

ARU with Florian Beigel as Director, are leading the architectural design team in a phased redesign of a 1960’s concrete warehouse building to house the new joint Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, (The Cass). Six floors( including basement) have been redesigned to accommodate studios, lecture rooms and office spaces for the whole faculty. The second phase works will be completed in autumn 2013.

Florian Beigel and ARU provide spatial and construction concepts on the client side design team. Architecture PLB in phase 01 and Woosley Architects in phase 02 are the Executive Architects on the contractors’ team delivering the project based on ARU’s design drawings.

The design is conceived as a little city within the building.The large studio floor plates are arranged with three geographies of studio room types extending the length of the building. This variety of room sizes and types is designed to be re-appropriated by different user groups and functions in time.

The boulevard is a shared meeting space on each floor connecting the rooms. Small ‘domestic staircases’ connect one floor to another providing additional means of communication between floors and between courses and students.

The design process involved intensive dialogue with stakeholder, faculty and student groups.

Social interaction, seeing and being seen, as in a public place is the intention. The widening and narrowing of the boulevard, and the carefully proportioned doors and windows all contribute to a sense of exteriority and city.

Dissemination:

Domus, (expected Nov. 2013)

The Architectural Review, June 2013.

Building Design, 11 Jan. 2013.

Architecture Today, Jan 2013.

Building Design, 29 July 2011.