I nearly accepted an offer from Ravensborne College in 2002. Earlier the same day I had my interview at London Met’s Spring House on Holloway Road (then University of North London) before travelling to slumbering Chislehurst where Ravensbourne’s campus was then. As a prospective student I remember being lead around a lateral cluster of studios, and it being very bright inside from the patent glazing. This made me feel very naked as I was ushered though large paint spattered spaces. Looking on Flikr at photos of it now, it could be an Alvar Aalto building - which of course I would not have concluded in my pre-architectural education days.
Spring House on the other hand was an intense beast. Holloway road was terrifying and the building seemed purposefully designed for collisions. Two unpredictable sets of double doors the first obstacle, then an abrupt left turn onto the solid, yet precarious flight of stair. These stairs have always made me feel uncomfortable, especially the uninviting crude steel handrail fixed onto cast concrete. When at the top of the first flight you will more often than not bump into someone you know, but can also quickly asses the activities of the two first year studios to either side. Once into the open warehouse spaces there is nearly always a crit happening that you will need to duck around. But all the same, the place had tutors and students and ideas that made me feel uncomfortable in an array of ways I knew I could learn from.
Both Spring House and the old Chislehurst campus (from memory) seemed to have creative authenticity. No precious decoration, mostly white paint on blocks or concrete - precisely how I expected to study, no oak paneled study rooms for me.
So it was the location that swung it, uneven pavements and buses rattling up the A1. The density of the buildings, and lack of pointless open space –which was strangely appealing, after coming from the diagrammed sprawl of Basildon.
The location of Ravenborne’s new North Greenwich campus by Foreign Office Architects is again tethered it into my space memory more than its appearance. Approach and journey are just as important. Travelling to its river location from Poplar meant negotiating flyovers and submerged roundabouts on foot, before boarding a bus under the Blackwall Tunnel where a narrow pavement petered into a kerb, to meet a concrete trench face. It was exhilarating and an adventure, the murky industrialised atmospheres of the two territories joined by the burrow.
Coming back to above ground level, the bus circled towards the giant Millennium Dome to a colourful collection of buildings. The Rave Building (as it is branded) sits next to two empty large curved office blocks that are a mix of glass and jumbled silver oblongs. They look nearly interesting, but really are not. The Rave has facades that clatter with reptilian patterns. But the riot happening at skin level is just scenery ready to fold in on itself.
Inside the propped up sensation continues with barren décor and wasteful atrium, the absence of a reception desk and flat entry makes the floor plan an unanchored tin pocket. Flexibility I would assume is FOA’s rational for it being so unceremonious. The many swirling porthole windows are larger onto the foyer area, but make the façade seeming even more flimsy. One clever trick is how the reveals of the round windows are highlighted with a bright dot applied like makeup to mimic a sun glint, making the building a literal interpretation of the 3d rendered model.
As I was leaving the building, an event at the millennium dome was just finishing and people headed towards the transport interchange. The Rave is so close to the Dome that it becomes part of its estate. Both buildings do have some shared interests and I can imagine that all students will do at least two projects on it. But art and design education relies on more than a proximity to a large tent. The attitude that the Rave building imparts is slick, yet has an emphasis on the virtual, internet based avenues open to designers (with limited off site workshops and no library - as the Dean prefers a paperless ebook archive). On the colleges website an outline to its BA Architecture course says;
‘Architects design and execute construction for a range of projects. From the Olympics to shopping malls to airports and corporate spaces, you could find yourself working on a number of challenging and invigorating projects.’
Quite a sorry summary of an Architects role but also reveals some more about the attitude if the college. Maybe this is an explanation of the end product – a building that will look great on its website.