Jo Bacon visits Nicholas Hare Architects’ University College London Student Centre

Words
Jo Bacon
Photos
Alan Williams

Before visiting the new Student Centre at University College London, I imagined that it might be a multipurpose building with the hybrid spaces that a student union requires. What I found is an altogether different kind of building, for desk-based, individual and group study, at a rather large scale – something not quite a library nor explicitly a social space. Despite the increasingly virtual nature of learning, this building illustrates that students like to be with others, and UCL may well have invented a new building type for urban universities.

Nicholas Hare Architects’ brief required repair and engagement: the building needed to remake a street, complete a courtyard and deliver open connections through the campus. The ambition was to link Gordon Street to the university’s Main Quadrangle, through the grade-I-listed Wilkins Building, with a public, open and accessible route to Gower Street. The Student Centre is considered the final major project in the transformation of UCL’s Bloomsbury campus. 

It’s a bespoke building – not as varied a commission nor as outwardly present as the Saw Swee Hock Centre at the London School of Economics by O’Donnell & Tuomey, a natural comparator, but it delivers diverse and complex volumes and spaces, and meets a pressing need for its owner. The brief from UCL Library Services was for a building that could be open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, with 1,000 study spaces, a cafe, a faith centre and offices for the student wellbeing group. It was also required to achieve BREEAM Outstanding.

I visited just a month after it had opened and the place was brimming with students, with 84 per cent of desks occupied at mid-day. Not unreasonably, the university is proud of this buzz of activity and the engagement with the students – it very clearly fills a gap. Almost every part of the building hosts desks and workspaces with computer and docking equipment for students to plug in their myriad of devices. Under-desk sensors monitor occupancy and connect to a UCL app that identifies available study spaces across the campus. The pressure to provide this kind of space has grown because the university has doubled its student numbers to 40,000 in the last 10 years.

Outside, the building politely negotiates with its surroundings. It infills a gap dating from the second world war, and its immediate neighbours are the 1968 Bloomsbury Theatre by James Cubitt & Partners (recently refurbished by NHA) and a handsome early nineteenth-century terrace by the prolific master-builder Thomas Cubitt. The main frontage on Gordon Street sits comfortably within the Bloomsbury Conservation Area, successful no doubt in the eyes of the Camden planners in recognising the rhythm and proportion of these surroundings. The bay widths refer to the Georgian terraces while the two- storey entrance acknowledges the dual levels across the site occupied by the ground and mezzanine floors. The entrance needed to be welcoming but – probably through the local authority requirement to have a drum door for access and the subdivision of the double-height glazing with darker panels for privacy – it feels rather discrete for a student hub.

The facade is a subdivided into nine-metre-wide bays, with openable vents at 1.5-metre centres, expressed and rotated from the fixed glass panels to create shading and special study seats within the plan. It is competently and politely handled – the step in the building line further mediates the volume while the top floor ‘attic’ storey breaks the mould and delicately highlights the roof profile. The frontage is the first indication of a building made with high quality materials and with sustainability at its heart, but does not reflect the dynamism of the interior. The external materials – primarily brick and precast stone – align well with both Gordon Street and the inner courtyard. The elevations are well detailed, with bronze anodised aluminium glazing, sloping precast sills that should weather sensibly, and even though the facade brickwork is mostly slips on precast panels, this is difficult to detect.

Inside, the building really does open up, revealing itself as a hidden treat. Upon entering, while one can see up and out to the courtyard beyond, the prime purpose of the spaces is immediately apparent, an observation aided by the bustling crowds. Students were socialising and studying on the generous agora steps and the street-side study space – carefully set aside from the entrance with a screen wall containing exhibits from the university collections – was completely full on a midweek morning.

Security is present but elegantly handled. The main reception desk is set back to make it obvious that the access to the main space is unrestricted, but well placed to encourage engagement. A through route up to the rear courtyard is open for those using either the stairs or the lift. Glass access screens make entry to the UCL-only areas easy and defined.

The central staircase is among the most interesting features of the building, occupying pride of place at the base of the naturally-lit atrium. Casual in demeanour and flexible in use, this feels like the social heart of the building, and it’s a clever way to handle the level change between Gordon Street and the rear courtyard. From this public ‘agora’, all the upper levels are visible, each with one or two sides open to the south-facing glazed volume. Here, too, NHA’s careful control of a limited palette of high-quality materials is evident, especially in the precast and in-situ concrete, York stone, and oak and acoustic panelling. Movement in the atrium feels relaxed while providing good visibility to the surrounding range of spaces and activities. The third-floor cafe was so crammed with students on my visit that I didn’t dwell for coffee, but instead perched on the external terrace with its fine view of Wilkins’ UCL dome and the distant Post Office Tower.

Above ground level, each area has distinct qualities and is well provided with daylight and quality furniture. Even with the high occupancy, the spaces offer calm, structured work space, including small booths for group study and ‘bunkers’ for group chats. Below ground, the largest study space in the building is without natural light, but with its generous height, good lighting, acoustic absorption and a modulated section, it is evidently successful. At the second basement level there is space for faith and contemplation, also without daylight, but the lighting is elegant and the spaces deliver sanctity in this most unlikely of locations.

Facing the courtyard behind, NHA has made its building look simple, despite engaging with numerous junctions, existing levels and complex ductwork. This west-facing elevation, respecting its neighbours and well proportioned, uses precast concrete to create a primary level, with a more transparent entrance than its counterpart on Gordon Street, and a well-composed clerestorey. Landscaping has been installed in the ‘Japanese Garden’, and while this has been initially no more than a repair, there remains an opportunity to engage more with the adjacent Jeremy Bentham Room, as Levitt Bernstein has done with the Wilkins Terrace in the courtyard immediately to the north.

UCL’s Student Centre delivers ample, complex and comfortable spaces within a modest footprint, and NHA has successfully orchestrated robust materials to cope with the demanding throughput, popularity and capacity of the building. The need for it is certainly borne out by the sheer numbers inhabiting it on a midweek morning. UCL wanted to invest in a quality building that would serve its students every hour of every day, and it is already paying dividends.

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