London College of Fashion (LCF) is one of six colleges making up the renowned University of the Arts London (UAL). In 2018, LCF announced plans to amalgamate its six central London campuses into one new building at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, as part of a new development known as East Bank, the UK’s cultural quarter for innovation, creativity and learning.
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Location Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London
Sector Higher Education
Project Size 440,000sq ft
The architect’s vision for the new LCF campus is a bold reimagining of 19th century mill buildings into a 21st century workshop. It is outwardly simple, unpretentious and robust, while capable of containing multiple complex and process-driven internal functions.
Now occupied by 5,000 students and faculty staff, the building is one of the largest dedicated to the study and research of fashion in the world and forms a key piece of East Bank’s cultural quarter.
Combining LCF’s original campus sites with such a variety and diverse character of disciplines in one place represents a step change in the functional organisation of the college.
Needing to accommodate both individual work and larger group activities and fully exploit the benefits of bringing all departments together, the circulation and shared spaces at the building’s core were designed to actively encourage planned and impromptu collaboration, exploration and a sense of shared identity.
Key Point
Our role in realising the vision
The material palette chosen by the architects is simple and muted enabling the character of students and their activities to take centre stage.
Each material performs a distinct structural and aesthetic function: Concrete is the robust structural skeleton, while warm maple timber provides the tactile elements of the building – doors, screens, balustrades, fixed furniture and handrails. Dark metal accommodates the core services of power, information and drainage.
Portview managed the testing, commissioning and handover of the building, ensuring the client was not only satisfied, but delighted with the outcome of this space. We were responsible for the extensive joinery throughout the building, installation of internal doors, washrooms, internal lining and partitions, architectural metalwork, floor and ceiling systems, and wall finishes. We managed the fire protection and acoustic performance, as well as liaising with other package contractors and specialists including the client’s MEP contractor.
Throughout the entire project we adhered to high standards of acoustic sound management and fire protection and played an important role in the coordination and seamless progress of other trades and services.
Key Point
Space overview
The new LCF building is huge by anyone’s standards. Totalling 440,000sq ft across 17 storeys, it comprises a wide variety of spaces, each designed for a specific number of uses. Floors 0-3 house the reception, student services, gallery, lecture theatre, refectory and library, making each level a unique challenge. The teaching spaces occupy floors 4-13, each identical to the other, while upper levels comprise visual studies, terraces, a refectory and further teaching spaces. Our work included the fit-out of all public areas including the lobby, stairway, connecting walkways, balustrades, and communal gathering spaces.
We installed a lecture theatre, visual study areas, a laboratory, breakout spaces, a library, teaching rooms and hubs. We also delivered cafés, public food preparation areas, bathrooms, showers, bike storage, modular meeting rooms and a refectory with a full production kitchen.
Our unique approach to overcoming the challenges posed by the LCF building was driven by our ‘model-first’ approach that enabled project collaboration as work progressed. To create an optimal design, we focused the supply chain on the delivery of modelling all scoped elements, resulting in all interfaces being developed, understood and resolved before site arrival. We used a user-orientated viewing platform to aid this approach and to create greater transparency, ensuring the wider team had easy access to the latest model information to inform its decision-making.
Gallery
Lecture theatre
The lecture theatre plays a multi-functional role in the university. Aside from being a core teaching space, it also serves as an auditorium for live performances, film screenings and conferences.
Key Point
The Heart
The LCF building operates like a vertical campus bringing together a diverse range of functions across 17 floors. In a central circulation route – ‘The Heart’ – are the building’s fixed elements: vertical circulation, lifts and WCs.
In cross-section, The Heart is a singular interconnected vertical space that links the building’s entrance hall and public functions at its lower levels – the auditorium, gallery, cafe and library – to the workshop and teaching floors at its middle and on upper levels, the refectory, drawings studios and roof terraces.
The most visually stunning feature of The Heart is the staircase and space around it. At the publicly accessible lower levels the stairs are generous and sculptural with a concrete, timber and glass balustrades framing the void space, separating it from the outer walkways and galleries.
Gallery
Library
The library is a rich resource of insight and historical inspiration and is home to fabric and garments as well as books. We installed a moisture-controlled archive room, incorporating double-lined glass display cases with controllable airflow. We negated noise reverberation in the public space with a high-level feature acoustic bulkhead behind maple hardwood slats, acoustic baffled ceilings, partitions and glazed entrance screens.
Key Point
Atrium & café
The main LCF entrance sets the scene for both the university’s reputation as one of the world’s great creative institutions, and for the design language and materiality found throughout the building.
The building’s entrance atrium immediately captures attention and imagination. A large sweeping reception desk sits in front of an equally huge backdrop, created by a spectacular metal weave curtain.
We built the reception desk from scratch, layering the carcass with multiple layers of 2mm deep microtopping concrete to create an incredibly durable finished surface. We also manufactured the steel structure that both supports the large metal curtain and forms an enclosed area to the rear of the reception desk.
High-level maple veneer wall linings give the café a simple, contemporary feel and contrast beautifully with stainless steel wall linings at a lower level. Glass-fronted fridge display units and storage cupboards sit under ultra-durable Corian surfaces that also serve as the café’s counter. We floored the entire atrium space with 150mm polished concrete floor that contains integrated underfloor heating.
Gallery
Public gallery
A gallery displaying fashion archives and student work sits just beyond the café area. On levels 2 and 3, we built and installed the gallery display cases, incorporating lighting and air conditioning designed to protect and preserve the exhibits, all accessed via a discreet full height door.
Key Point
Refectory & commercial kitchen
The university’s main refectory on level 10 is designed to cater daily for thousands of students and staff. It has a range of catering options and zones including self-prep areas with banks of integrated microwaves, coffee bars, mid-floor hot and cold buffet stations as well as a full production area serving freshly prepared food throughout the day.
We installed all surfaces and fixed elements of the huge refectory including the resin finished floor, ceramic wall tiles and plasterboard walls with durable acrylic surface finish, while our joinery teams built all storage cupboard carcasses, finishing them with maple faced doors and brushed stainless steel handles.
In an area with so many hard surfaces, acoustic baffling played an important role in preventing the chatter and noise of hundreds of diners reverberating round the room. To that end, Troldtekt cement-bonded wood wool acoustic panels and rafts were fixed directly to the soffit, directly under the floor slab of the level above.
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