Tiers of textured brick and a sawtooth roof announce the new extension of the Royal College of Art (RCA) campus in Battersea in London as you approach from the river. The 15,500 square-metre complex designed by Herzog & de Meuron is composed of a studio and workshop building and the Rausing Research & Innovation Building, wrapped in vertical white aluminium fins, beyond it. Both rest on a joint brick podium, the union of these two “wings” referencing the merging of the more traditional arts and design subjects the postgraduate institution is known for with areas such as technology, innovation and entrepreneurship that are being increasingly fostered and promoted.
The Swiss architecture firm is known for another, major, London commission, the twisting pyramidal Switch House extension for the Tate Modern in London. “People connect this project to the Tate because of the perforated brickwork,” says John O’Mara, an associate at Herzog & de Meuron and project director, “but the technical language is entirely different.” At the Tate the architects wanted to create “a diaphanous veil that encapsulated and unified the building,” he says, “which was a major engineering challenge. Here we went right back to basics and played with traditional and well-established forms of construction.”
Topography of brick
That doesn’t mean there isn’t artistry in this building however, quite the contrary. The groundfloor facade is formed of bricks in a Flemish bond. On the upper studio level, the ground floor brick pattern is turned inside out, and the cut ends of the header bricks are exposed instead of pushed in, their protruding blackened faces showing the chemical properties of the firing. The bricks are not handmade but waterstruck, which gives them a softer and textured appearance. The result is an undeniable ode to the artistry of brick.
Inside, the simple but effective material play continues. The concrete used on the walls, floors, and ceilings was formed with plyboards used to exhaustion. There are places where you see the grain, and others where it looks very faint. The architects were not worried about visual consistency, as their abundant use of ground granulated blast-furnace slag as a low carbon cement substitute, which went up to the 80 % mark, according to O’Mara, also attests. The idea was that, like the RCA’s Grade II listed 1960s brutalist Darwin tower in Kensington, which was clearly an inspiration for the project, this building should be a robust container facilitating the creativity and work within.
One of the extension’s most touted features, its so-called permeability, is, perhaps, its least convincing aspect, though this has little to do with the design. The Herzog & de Meuron project admirably knits the surrounding RCA campus buildings together, recreating a Victorian city block and providing circulation routes in and out. Yet contact with the outside world will likely be tightly controlled. Cross routes through the campus and access to the central hangar, a double-height atrium that can host lectures, exhibitions, and parties will, in practice, be limited to special occasions for the general public. This is a university with highly confidential, potentially patentable technology inside, after all, and security guards at the entrances. The public’s interaction with the building may be reduced to viewing it from afar or sitting on one of the brick benches nestled into the studio building’s walls along Howie Street.
