rOYAL Location
CAMDEN, london, uk writer
jonathan glancey photography
tim Soar
VETERINARY cOLLEGE
I am sitting in a
sun-filled courtyard, sipping coffee in a raised plywood pod, and looking down at the skeleton of a two-year-old African elephant. From this vantage point, dotted with neatly placed holes, I can make out two marks in the creature’s skull, showing how it met its brutal end two centuries ago: a spear through the head. Elsewhere, in tall glass cases,
there is the skeleton of a polar bear, arranged in a sitting position as if waiting to be brought a coffee, as well as the skulls of a hippopotamus, a gazelle and an alligator, looking out at us just as we look at them. Below, scaling a branch, is the skeleton of a three-toed sloth. It’s a bit like being on some strange fossil safari – though I am, of course, a long way from the plains of Africa.
This delightful spot is one of
the most inspiring new squares in Britain: a spacious courtyard at the heart of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London. This unexpected space has the feel of one of those compact yet incident-packed piazzas you might stumble across in a historic Italian town; and yet, with its modern design, edged by brick walls and steel-framed windows, this is clearly
008 ArchitecturePLB / 1971–2011 / Buildings
a very contemporary café and square – although there’s a lot more to this place than the tinkling of teacups and the guzzling of cake. Rising up through three storeys, the newly adapted courtyard acts as a thoroughfare, linking classrooms, library, lecture hall and laboratories – not to mention the RVC’s collection of animal skeletons and other sliced, pickled and bottled specimens. As well as housing the fashionable café, this is also a place for study – either at the ground-floor tables, or, more thrillingly, up in the pod, which connects to the main library. ‘We would have liked a bigger
elephant skeleton,’ says Rupert Cook, director of ArchitecturePLB. As we speak, there are students sitting at tables and sprawling on the pod’s floor. ‘It may look casual,’ adds Cook, ‘but they’re working. You don’t get to be a vet by drinking coffee and text-messaging all day. ‘This is a particularly relaxed
space, though – students can even come here to have a quick sleep between exams. What we’ve tried to do is provide layers of space for learning, from the formal to the informal. As you climb the stair from the café to the pod, there’s a
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