PROJECT REPORT: EDUCATION & RESEARCH FACILITIES 33


exactly why design decisions were made. However, Tatham says that before that rigour was applied to their designs, while the client body wanted a “lively” building, the brief wasn’t clear at the outset. This meant a “prolonged” Stage 0 to establish its actual desires – during which the architects “did an awful lot of interviewing, in some cases one to one.” He says there was also a push from the planners as well as the university to increase the social spaces on the campus – “they felt there wasn’t any social infrastructure at all.” As a result of the loose brief – and budget – says Tatham, “we had to kind of go through a process of gleaning information from people who would use and work at the facility, and consolidated that into a scheme. The architect said that the “completely open ended” brief – which was fitting for a flexible building with little precedent – was part of what made this a great project for the practice – “it almost felt like being back at university,” he tells ADF. “You could sort


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of take it where you wanted,” he says. The practice created a number of “high level” schemes showing a variety of options. This organic evolution of a programme and form for this unprecedented blend of typologies included the designers visiting a wide range of projects for inspiration. “We did a lot of work in terms of seeing buildings at other universities, but also looked at flexible working spaces, and some quite nice restaurants and cafeterias.” Tatham adds: “We were casting the net wide because the university didn’t want another generic kind of student hub building, they wanted something quite special, they wanted it to be somewhere that people naturally gravitated to, because it was a great place to be.”


Design approach Tatham says that to not be constrained by budget, initially at least, or building area, and to be able to “just kind of go with our gut instinct in terms of what was right”


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“It is a truly holistic blended use scheme that responds dynamically to changing needs” James Tatham, Jestico + Whiles


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