Studio Egret West with Emoli Petroshka Architects were appointed by Lewisham College to help define and articulate a vision for their new campus at Deptford Bridge
We distilled our work with the College into a brief for a developer competition which seeks partners to build out the new college alongside a high density mixed use development of the Deptford Peninsula. The identity of Lewisham College is clear and well defined; the school naturally knows how to promote itself to a wider audience be they the general public or students. The college is branded by its L logo and the uplifting manifesto of its principal Dame Ruth Silver. Architecturally, the college has no voice, no logo, no manifesto; no clear identity. We proposed the unification of the college, united under the architectural language of one building on a site that is cut up physically by river, creek and DLR. A significant challenge!
Our fundamental concept for the college is to create an emporium – A large place in which to gather, to be intrigued, to discover something particular in a great room and to then partake in a trade of its curiosities. Lewisham College is already well equipped with a cast of curios inside distinct collections; beauty inside hospitality, dance inside cultural studies, technology inside business. Each has something very particular to offer; to be traded and each is often supported or united to another. Taken as a whole, the curriculum, the courses and their faculties make for a rather heady assemblage that cannot be divided into separate departments or asked to work independently.
Lewisham college should have a proud structure where the details speak both of the individual (student) and the collective (college). In addition, the materiality of your structure will speak of the craft and learning within by your creative articulation of the buildings fabric. Careful decisions made at the outset will dictate whether a structure becomes eminently flexible in the long term or redundant other than to a particular use. It should be understood that the college is a guaranteed flexible entity; year on year faculties will expand and contract, develop new courses, merge or dissolve.
Equally, each faculty will be looking to tweak and adapt its teaching methods year on year to accommodate new ideas in learning that will require spaces flexible enough to change under the leadership of each head of department. Not only will these be led by pedagogical change, but by student change and technological development. A typical space allocation chart of a college will show that around thirty percent of the gross area will be required to circulate within.
Commonly, these spaces have taken the form of corridors and circulation cores that cannot be used by the students. In a creative college like Lewisham, we can safely assume that the students can think laterally when it comes to the occupation of space; likewise, the college will have this ability.
A place to meet, a place to rest, a place to read, a place for council, a place for enterprise, a place to create; a snapshot of numerous activities that both students and teachers have little room for within the confines of the classroom but could find great potential in the less informal space between. At Lewisham college we advocated replacing the corridor with a place for activity: tutor led or student led with large zones that become the active balance. Finally, tight site constraints and the proposed public routes on the Deptford site leave little, if any, space for student amenity. So we proposed amenity roof gardens for both ubiquitous activity and faculty specific means. When they have little, surround them with grandeur.
The entirety of the school should have the capacity to trade itself to the population of the school; a clearly horizontal enterprise where students can simply walk from one point to the next to trade in activity, knowledge, advice or seek further achievement. Lewisham College hosts enough activity and holds enough accommodation to enable each fasade, internal or external, to become a window into the various faculties. Its immediate proximity to the Deptford Bridge allows the college to showcase its wares to the public.
