MICA Living and Learning Brochure 221215

Living and Learning

MICA is an award winning practice working in the UK and internationally across architecture, heritage and landscape projects. We work at all scales and levels, from urban design to individual buildings, interiors and furniture, designed for long term institutional sustainability.

We are pleased to enclose this updated brochure of our recent work in schools, colleges and universities with a focus on recent arts, theatre and performance spaces, as we know these are relevant to Oberlin’s upcoming development plans.

Our approach is analytical and perceptive, with an emphasis on engaging with clients and solving contextual challenges. This is a brief summary of our work and collaboration creating the most inspiring and uplifting environments for learning.

Northgate digital hub and residences

MICA views the situation of any project from a holistic sustainability starting point. We work with clients to help them define the pathway to net zero for their estates, from the financing and procurement, to the energy strategy across campuses, to the design of new buildings or adaptive reuse for minimal energy consumption and increased biodiversity. We are pioneers in low-energy design, in alternative energy sources, low embodied carbon construction and we create optimal environments in which people thrive.

Ground Source Heat Pumps at Keble College

Lyric Theatre light-filled atrium BREEAM Excellent

Cross Laminated Timber used to build Hands Building student accommodation at Mansfield College

New Energy Centre feeds existing historic campus at Wellington College

Regenerative campus

Lancaster University Spine Landscape

Our architecture places the experience of the user at the heart of the project. This begins from the earliest stakeholder engagement at the commencement of a project, and we warmly welcome the opportunity to interact with our clients in creative and meaningful ways to draw out the brief for the project.

Human centered design, with excellent daylighting but controlled glare; thermal comfort with taking advantage of passive solar gains, biophilia through internal and external greenery that also mitigates heat islands, all lead to places that uplift the users. This is embodied as much in residential and education spaces, as it is in sport, dance and other creative physical activities.

Robin Geffen cafe at the H B Allen Centre, Keble College

H B Allen Centre student consultation event

Wellbeing Centre at Wellington College

Hicks Bolton landscaped playspace

Health and wellbeing

Lyric Theatre Hammersmith

We create inspirational learning environments by answering students social, learning, and working needs. These types of welcoming, pleasurable spaces encourage deep emotional attachments between students and the University, while offering unique ways of collaborating and interacting with fellow learners and information.

We have worked with pioneers in academic and industry fields to create spaces for virtual reality experiences, interactive digital hubs, and centers for mobile robotics, all of which feed into our ever-evolving bank of knowledge on education space design.

We are equipped with the tools to collaborate with educators and re-think the types of spaces that encourage creative learning and critical thinking.

Oxford Robotics Institute, Keble College Flexible workshop and experimentation space to allow for a diverse and developing programme of research.

Future learning

Northgate digital hub, Jesus College

MICA is adept at understanding the potential in existing buildings and adpating the to new uses, capitalising on the existing embodied carbon, and giving it a new lease of life, breathing new life into existing fabric.

We are equally comfortable working with historic and modern building fabric: we replaced a dingy undercroft with generous social dining space at Centrepoint in London’s Soho. Our work for the East Ham civic centre created a new sixth form college within a former technical college, brining unexpected flexibility to the historic asset. Our deep energy retrofit approach to deep energy retrofit means the new buildings are efficient to operate long into the future.

North entrance restored to expose original finishes

Newham Sixthform new science classrooms and laboratories

Lincoln’s Inn library reworked stair

Adaptive re-use

Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre 2014

We work in rich historic contexts, and our in-house team of qualified Specialist Conservation Architects creates exemplary work that has been used as exemplary case studies in Historic England guidance. We have transformed and brought back into public use everything from layered medieval castles in rural settings such as Hay Castle in Wales to prestigious urban institutions such as the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, opening up spectacular new spaces while celebrating the existing historic fabric.

We recognise the importance of a strong site narrative and robust set of parameters to underpin a proposal, always on the basis that the setting is improved, and universal access is created.

Repairs to existing historic stonework East Range featured in English Heritage guidance book

Hay Castle restoration

Heritage and conservation

Ashmolean Museum

MICA’s team brings extensive experience building new homes for students in sensitive environments: we have completed more than 330 homes for students in England in the last two years with a further 1230 in development: as a result we have a strong sense of 21st century young people and their values. For MICA, each project is a blank page: we realize that our clients’ needs vary and therefore we are good listeners and work collaboratively to envision high quality residences to create the foundation environment for learning.

Student homes

West House, Stowe School

Northgate, Jesus College

Over the last twenty years our team has helped the University of Oxford to navigate the substantial pedagogical and typological transformations that have occurred in higher education, brought about by the increasing demand for 24 hour accessible, socially innovative, and digitally sophisticated spaces for research and learning. Our emphasis on critical thinking and creative problem- solving, along with extensive client engagement, has allowed the creation of dynamic and flexible buildings that blur the boundaries of learning and social spaces, all within the strict confines of a historic city and its heritage buildings.

Keble College Parks Road Campus

Northgate, Jesus College 2022

University of Oxford

“We are interested in buildings as pieces of the city, in the weave of urban fabric, in making places, in efficiency, in environmental design, in new and old, and in sensitive and respectful design.

Building in Oxford demands these considerations whilst also inviting rewarding client collaborations and unique opportunities for architects and for architecture.”

- Stuart Cade, Director at MICA

This is England’s first public art gallery (1811), an architectural masterpiece by Sir John Soane. Suggesting a formal quadrangle, the new building forms a cloistered entrance garden in front of the gallery. Central to the design is the cloister, which links the cafe, lecture room and education centre to the main picture gallery. It mediates between the differing architectural styles, setting up a shifting rhythm with glass rooflights reflecting the buttresses of the chapel. The existing gallery has been entirely restored, including sophisticated new artificial and natural lighting discretely incorporated into the existing building fabric.

The southern façade of the café and the facades of the cloister open to engage the garden and the main gallery.

England’s first gallery

The Cultural Centre provides a new home for the Towner Art Gallery collection, as well as providing new conference exhibition space, community activity rooms, gallery and retail facilities and a cafe. The building incorporates art storage for the Towner permanent collection and is designed to enable the public to view the Gallery’s entire collection for the first time. Flexible spaces have been designed to accommodate touring exhibitions, conferencing and the promotion of education and learning with the building, acting as a base for community outreach programmes. The design of the new building is informed by many factors including views, circulation and the scale and nature of neighbouring existing buildings.

Towner Gallery art archives

Flexible contemporary art galleries

Contemporary art

new Reuben Foundation Wing of the Lyric Hammersmith has it all. The project to turn the Lyric into “the South Bank of West London”, not to mention the greenest theatre in the Capital, will provide a home for a vastly expanded programme of work for young people”

- Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

Two phases; the first, an entrance building that re-imagined the theatre’s previously understated street presence making it an inclusive, vibrant destination with improved public realm. The second, a podium extension to deliver state-ofthe-art facilities for theatre, dance, film music, digital and more.

“The

Teaching theatre

Flexible studios for dance and performances, with ocular rooflight

Our work at the Horniman Museum’s original South Hall saw the re-imagining of gallery and object display spaces through clarifying base build infrastructure, rationalising servicing, and moderating a reintroduction of natural light. The complete refurbishment reopened daylighting to the barrel-vaulted gallery, controlled by a lightweight 30m long foil, which dramatically washes light across the ceiling to better celebrate, and make inviting the impressive space.

We also created a new Studio within the Emslie Horniman Lecture Hall, following local and museum community input, to be a central gathering space for academic lectures, events, and fit for temporary exhibition and theatre performances.

New

New

Museum Entrance Music Gallery

Nature Base

Rooflight and foil extended into stairwell South Hall Gallery beyond

Strategic diagram illustrating works to the museum to improve connectivity to the refurbished gallery

Refurbished South Hall with new servicing and day light re-introduced, and a new collection

Line of sight from Museum Entrance Gallery Square

door to South Hall

Re contextualising the collection

MICA’s redevelopment of the Fairfield Halls is the first completed stage of a new cultural quarter in Croydon’s town centre – a major milestone in the town’s ongoing redevelopment. The Halls reopened in 2019 to popular & critical acclaim and extensive local pride in their restored icon and a much-loved regional venue. The holistic design approach marries sensitive restoration of a large mid-century concert hall and playhouse theatre with new extensions providing flexible contemporary venues, event spaces, multi-use foyers and a range of food and beverage opportunities. All aspects are carefully designed to maximise enjoyment and revenue. The scheme is multi-award winning, including UK Refurbishment Project of the Year in 2020.

The re-built and extended Arnhem Gallery venue adds a new multi-function performance and rehearsal space at Level 02

A new glazed north extension with café and community studio provides active frontage to the previously blank College Green façade

Community performance

Virginia Museum of the Fine Arts appointed our team to design and deliver a major expansion and renovation of the 65-year old museum, which adds more than 9300m² to the existing 22,300m² building. Completed in April 2010, the new museum complex includes a 1.6 hectare sculpture garden, extensive new galleries, educational facilities, restaurant, cafe, library, administrative offices and a landscaped, terraced parking deck.

Best Cafe spills out onto garden terrace

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

A centre to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret art

Our principal work for the Ashmolean was a large new and seamless building addition to the oldest public museum in Britain. Attached to the rear of the 1845 Cockerell Greek revival building, we proposed a radical reconfiguration of the heart of the museum with new galleries, circulation, and the relocation of shop, café and education spaces.

A plunging, light-filled atrium draws visitors directly into the formerly circuitous and inaccessible museum and is an exciting wayfinding and multi-function space enlivened by views to the double-height treasure-filled galleries, elegant soaring bridges and a staircase on which ‘to see and be seen’, and topped by a new rooftop terrace restaurant affording views across the dreamy spires of Oxford.

A curated visitor experience and variety of spaces to showcase the collection.

Green roof terrace provides spill out for the cafe to be enjoyed by visitors

Early concept sketch. The building is organised by two major axes, creating a clear route through the building, unifying the entire museum and collection in a coherent manner.

World-class museum

“This building clears the bar by a mile to give a world-class institution a worthy new home. Entered through the Cockerell façade into a day-lit atrium, which is modest in plan yet dramatic in section, rising through six floors with a subtly curved staircase cascading down one wall, the atrium unifies the museum. The route navigates its way through 39 galleries with a clever interleaving of double and single height spaces creating a rich spatial journey.”

- Mark Lawson, RIBA Awards Judge

Left Ashmolean Museum Awards

Civic Trust Award 2011

Travel + Leisure Design Awards - Best Museum 2011 Shortlisted for RIBA Stirling Prize 2010 - winner of Peoples Vote RIBA Award 2010 + 2012

Building Award 2010 - Project of the Year Oxford Preservation Trust Award 2010 + 2012

New Ashmolean Museum, Oxford £61m Phase I 2009

Ashmolean Teaching Museum. A landlocked site adjoining Grade I listed museum providing exhibition, conservation, teaching and research facilities and rooftop restaurant.

Cultural pedagogy

We have worked with Keble College, one of the largest residential colleges of Oxford University, continuously since 1995, completing two new student accommodation buildings, various renovation projects and a new bike shelter. Our largest project with Keble to date, the H B Allen Centre completed in 2019. This ongoing collaboration has been fruitful for all parties, and we regularly engage their alumni and other donors with presentations of our work at social events.

“The client was rightly delighted with the solution which resulted in such high standard accommodation, built at half the cost of a traditional Oxbridge residential building. Nevertheless it is a fitting neighbour to those by Butterfield.”

- Judges comment, British Construction Industry Awards

Left ARCO Awards RIBA Award 1997 Civic Trust Award 1997 British Construction Industry Award 1997

Conference spaces with views out to Newman Quad

Sloane Robinson 2002

25-year relationship with Keble College

Acland House supported on piles whilst basement slab is cast below Subterranean collaborative learning and research centre

Home for innovation and entrepreneurship

The H B Allen Centre integrates a historic TG Jackson building within the heart of the campus. Among the challenges the construction team faced was that of excavating under the Jackson Building and constructing an entirely new basement and foundations without it collapsing.

Beneath the H B Allen Centre quad, a 2,000m2 open plan space has been designed for research and laboratories. Flexibly configured, the first two tenants are the Robotics Institute and venture capital from Oxford Sciences Innovation who provide incubator and accelerator space for post-graduate enterprises.

Engaging with nature

Aerial sketch of Clive Booth Student Village

MICA has designed the concept for Linacre College to put forward a plan that would help the University of Oxford to deliver on the target set in the 2018-2023 University Strategic Plan to increase graduate student intake substantially.

The initial architectural vision for a large, centrally-located, University-owned site with enormous development opportunity. Our design offers a unique opportunity, right in the heart of the city, to build new facilities that will be architecturally and functionally outstanding, set within new landscaped gardens that welcome students and visitors alike.

A social dining hall at the heart of the college

Unique opportunities

To support and inform Wellington College’s decision making process, a 25 year estate development strategy was prepared by MICA to identify and explore potential development site. A range of new flexible buildings and spaces have been identified in relation to sports, performing arts, accommodation, teaching, alongside new typologies in support of social interaction and informal learning. Strategic investment in the College site wide infrastructure include new low carbon solutions, improved visitor access, and the creation of a series of new character areas to improve daily life at the College.

Finding sites within existing estate ownership to meet the College’s aspirations and strategic objectives

Wellington College, new boarding and accessible landscape

Landscape estates

Long term strategic site masterplan with accompanying enabling buildings for Wellington College, which identifies key development sites for a 25 year development programme, in spacious wooded grounds of 400 acres in and around the original Grade 1 listed Victorian school campus.

Hidden from the historic south front the Old Laundry site offers a unique experience for the College in bringing forward new boarding and day facilities. Sensitively integrated into the woodland setting that enhance connections across the College.

The boarding house is for both boys and girls with 70 beds with shared facilities, entrance staff, common space in the centre and flanked by a wing of boys and a wing of girls. The buildings are arranged around the perimeter of the site - creating a central woodland quad which brings the landscape into the lived setting and offers biodiversity enhancements

Social study space with views to landscape

Study bedroom

A new woodland quad

Wellington College Woodland Quad

A new pastoral and Wellbeing Centre situated on the edge of Wellington College’s historic estate, provides a rare opportunity to create modern, high quality purposed built centre to support pupils in a holistic setting.

Student wellbeing

Working with Stowe: 20 years experience at Stowe School from estates masterplan to delivering four new boarding houses and an Art School.

“MICA brought superb master-planning and coherence to the academic area and allowed the School to develop an educational vision which has made Stowe into one of the top independent schools in the UK.”

- Dr Anthony Wallersteiner, Headmaster

Top Stowe West Five Boarding House Bottom Working Model of masterplan

Regenerate estates

“Stowe now offers the best teaching facility of its kind anywhere in the UK.”

- Brian Johnson, the Head of Stowe Art School

When Stowe School decided to admit females for the first time, our team were engaged to design two new dedicated boarding houses, building out the tenets of the masterplan. Situated west of Stowe House, the Queen’s and Stanhope buildings respond to the shift in geometry of the historic gardens and the context of the surrounding buildings. Accommodation for 72 girls in each block.

West Five Girls’ Boarding House

Social Centred Living

Queen’s and Stanhope

Peking University HSBC Business School is the highest ranking university in China, based in Beijing and Shenzhen. PHBS UK’s vision is to create a world-class environment for education that will attract the highest calibre students and promote business learning and exchange between the UK and China. The new Foxcombe Hall campus benefits from a quiet, rural setting that specifically suits postgraduate study. The new buildings will be delivered to achieve Passivhaus Classic accreditation.

Modern study, living and work space

The Hands Building was constructed with an innovative carbon negative CLT frame. This offers the benefit of carbon sequestration within the timber, classing the building as the greenest of its kind in Oxford.

“The Hands Building, designed by MICA Architects, is an exemplar for student and academic accommodation, and a model off sustainability, which will significantly reduce the running costs for the College.”

- Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Principal

The Hands Building provides en-suite accommodation for 73 students

Illustration of how the level change is used to maximise potential of the new building and how landscape integrates the building into it’s setting

Hands Building Awards

Structural Timber Awards 2018, Shortlisted Oxford Preservation Trust 2018, New Building Certificate

Low carbon living

The Hands Building, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

presented a well thought out, considered approach to the Lincoln’s Inn masterplan. Their fresh, innovative ideas, combined with a thorough understanding of the sensitivities of a heritage site, offer us the opportunity to address current practical issues within a framework for our development that has revealed exciting opportunities for future development.”

- Mary Kerr, Under Treasurer

Ashworth Centre, training hub for lawyers

“MICA

Development at Lincoln’s Inn intensifies use of existing building stock

Estate efficiencies

14% increase in spatial utilisation at Lincoln’s Inn

The new library is the centre of collegiate activity

A major new education campus for Wellington College International, accommodating 800 pupils from nursery to sixth form. The new school is located in Pune, approximately 90 miles south-east of Mumbai, and recalls the grandeur of the original Wellington College buildings in Berkshire with brick and stone arches and cloistered and courtyard spaces. Formal and informal at the same time, it reinterprets these characteristic features for a 21st century context and for the local climate and conditions, to create a contemporary, but timeless and enduring building embodying the ethos of Wellington College for future generations.

Auditorium

Swimming Pool

Cafe for student and staff use

International identity

Wellington College Entrance Courtyard

We have been engaged by Cheltenham Ladies’ College to create a 25-year masterplan, and to complete the outline design of two new boarding houses, focusing on creating stronger links through the town to better integrate the existing scattered boarding houses. The proposals will house approximately 190 students.

“We have been impressed by MICA’s understanding of our requirements, the attention to details and their ability to communicate with our stakeholders with high quality presentations.”

- Edwin Wai, Estates Project Manager

Consolidation of a common route across the campus

New student accommodation within heritage setting of Christ Church - Red brick complements the existing lodge and sits harmoniously in the context

Legacy and future flexibility

An appraisal of the built fabric, accessibility and educational facilities of the main Grade I, II* Listed campus, to improve facilities and locate sites for development and refurbishment.

Northgate House is a new mixed-use development for Jesus College, Oxford with ground floor retail as well as academic facilities and accommodation on the second floor upward. The lower floors of the complex add a new open-data and digital institute for Oxford University designed to promote interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange.

Digital Hub atrium space

Social student living spaces

Hub buildings

Jesus College hub building viewed from the Cornmarket thoroughfare

From our London offices we have infrastructure in place to work across the world and have previously established local project teams for international cultural and education projects. We have established working relationships with reliable architect practices across the United States, and look forward to making new connections in the future. Our office employs a diverse group of individuals from around the world, with registered architects across five different countries including the USA.

A project goes through thousands of hands, but we recognise a responsibility to deliver it with a small number of individuals, team members and project sponsors, always accountable and present, whether virtually or physically.

International Collaborators:

Bruner Cott - Architect of Record

SO-IL - Architects

Charcoal Blue - theatre design (UK and USA)

Atelier 10 - sustainability consultant and services engineer (UK and USA)

Silman - structural engineers

Eckersley O’Callaghan - facade consultants and structural engineers (UK and USA)

Nitche Engineering - civil engineers

Kohler Ronan - services engineers

Cerami Associates - acoustic consultant

Cline Betteridge Bernstein - lighting design

OLIN Studio - landscape architects

Omnivore - graphic designers

Ricca Design Studios - kitchen design

Stuart Lynn - cost consultant

Jensen Hughes - fire engineers

Working in the USA

Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts Baton Rouge visioning project

Metropolitan Museum of Art Plaza with Olin 3d printed protoype of digital hub

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Services. As a practice we have developed forward looking models across multiple sectors: cultural, transport, civic, and in education. MICA continuously evaluates and researches best practice and future trends across all areas of work, education and learning practices. Industries served include: Masterplanning, Creative Industries, Modern Methods of Construction, Green and circular economies, Low carbon – environmental, Healthy Streets, and Regeneration and Planning. Services provided include:

Architecture + Planning

Technical Director + QA Engagement + Consultation + Project Management

Conservation Architecture + Heritage

Environmental Design + Sustainability + Passivhaus Design Placemaking + Landscape Design

Masterplanning + Urban Design

BIM Co-ordination + Management Architecture + Design Research

Principal Designer + Health & Safety + CDM

Interior Design + Workplace Design + Space Planning Contract Administration Graphics + Branding PR + Marketing

Visualisations + 3D modelling + Virtual Reality Physical Model Making

Consultation. We are a friendly and collaborative team and enjoy working closely with clients, consultants and communities to both deliver buildings and champion masterplans. We are medium-sized and nimble enough to adapt and change to suit and often balance the need to challenge a status-quo whilst listening and heeding. To build consensus and buy-in, we understand a need for an approach which maintains openness, allowing people to contribute.

Fundraising. We have significant experience in working with donors and fund raisers and fully understand the process involved for securing funding and support for major capital projects from a wide variety of public and private sources. We know how to present and develop proposals that appeal to donors and have been instrumental in bringing key funders into projects.

“Amazing”

- Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II Visiting the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn

MICA Architects Ltd 123 Camden High St London NW1 7JR +44 (0)207 284 1727 micaarchitects.com