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“The institution should not be an ivory tower, detached from the world, but integrated with other schools and the business community.” Alejandro Zaera-Polo, FOA


© Morley Von Sternberg


tion, a student chill-out space is another atrium-like space at the fourth floor level, sprinkled with funky chairs and sofas plus the obligatory pool and fussball tables. This design of two stepped atria is the main idea in the building, says Zaera-Polo, around which the rest flows into a new, ‘almost liquid space’ and forming ‘a new topography of learning’. Floors are stepped and continuous, rather like the way a car ascends a split-level, multi-storey car park, inducing a diagonal movement through the spaces and interlinking them. ‘From every floor you see part of the one below and part of the one above.’ The empha- sis is on open plan, but there are also bookable spaces and a privacy pod for the moments when private meetings are neces- sary. Further up, there is a separate boardroom and executive


space for some of the 150 staff who will take charge of the building and its 1,400 students. And elsewhere there are spaces dedicated to fashion, with lines of sewing machines and ironing boards, rapid prototyping kit, television, animation and recording studios, a green room, a study zone (library), with all spaces Wi-Fi enabled, unisex toilets and kitchen areas on each floor. Perhaps, though, the most emblematic space is Baker’s personal favourite – the server room, with its multi- coloured wires and cables at the heart of the scheme’s digital creativity. Another major element in Ravensbourne’s make-up is the


extent to which it works with the local community and busi- nesses. It features an enterprise and innovation centre it calls


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