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SCHOOL OF DIGITAL ARTS, MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
The light wall is designed to be low-tech (only operating when the building is open), composed of flexible strands of high- intensity, full colour LED ‘nodes’ enabling a 20,000 pixel moving image
completed for MMU. According to Wilby, it’s the first higher education building in the country “where you can make a film, do the effects and post-production for it, and screen it, all in the same building.” Courses run here include film, animation, UX (‘user experience’) design, photography, games design, and AI (artificial intelligence). The completed building contains a “digital innovation lab,” as well as open workspaces, green screen studios, editing suites, and a screening space; there’s also a media gallery, sound studios and production studios. At the heart of the building are a series of shared work and social areas, including a double-height ‘digital hall,’ and open seminar spaces designed to foster collaborations between students, and between staff. The top floor is dedicated to music, with a series of music production and edit suites connected via video links. The brief was for a very open building, partly driven by the client’s agenda to “interlink the whole arts campus,” says Wilby, given the synergies between many of its disciplines. It also needed to be very flexible, given the uncertain nature of future development: “No-one knows where digital is going to be in 10 years, so we had to make the building lithe enough to cope.” The concrete frame was fundamental to
this, Wilby says that it allows for potential future additions like a mezzanine to simply provide, for example, an extra 500 m2 with “no compromise.”
Site & Form
The architects’ focus was “simple, robust design,” and being as energy efficient as possible, says Wilby. The straightforward form was “basically an extruded cube, with low volume to area ratios.” The site, on the edge of the campus, was challenging to work with – being a former car park, including a road running through it. Early in the project, the architects reviewed the masterplan with the client to “unlock” the idea of removing the road, says Wilby. This opened up opportunities for connections to the art school, as well as sending out a positive anti-car use message. It would also enable the architects to extend the form of the new building out further, giving it a stronger identity on the campus.
The concrete-framed building has been designed without an explicit ‘front or back,’ as there is a possibility of the campus being extended in future. Following the brief, the designers stripped back what would have been a larger form, “fitting in all the technical spaces, but
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF OCTOBER 2022
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