Opening of the ArtsTwo Building 5-14 March 2012
“ArtsTwo represents a major addition to the College’s built environment, and is emblematic of our confidence and ambition as a leading higher education institution” Professor Simon Gaskell, Principal, Queen Mary, University of London
Vision ArtsTwo, the new humanities building at Queen Mary, University of London is a striking landmark on the Mile End Road. Officially opened by HRH The Princess Royal on Friday 9 March 2012, the £21m building is the new home for the College’s School of History, with some 70 members of staff and a 650-strong student cohort. The Leo Baeck Institute, London, a leading research hub for the study of German Jewish history and culture is also housed in ArtsTwo.
“We are all now in the same building which is very good for the cohesion and collective spirit of the School”
The five-storey building, nominated for three architectural awards, has a suite of seminar rooms and a 300-seat lecture theatre – facilities that serve the entire College and local community. The burgeoning Film and Drama Departments also benefit from ArtsTwo’s purpose-built studio for teaching and research, in addition to public lectures and performances.
Professor Julian Jackson, Head of the School of History
“This space indicates the College’s commitment to supporting drama and film in having the most excellent facilities, for both our research and our teaching, and also for sharing with the community” Jen Harvie, Acting Head of Drama, School of English and Drama
The College and Faculty Queen Mary is the fourth largest College of the University of London, with 16,800 students, 3,800 staff and a budget of ÂŁ300m per annum. Queen Mary has expanded its undergraduate and postgraduate recruitment in recent years, and ArtsTwo provides excellent facilities to support high calibre degree studies.
In the Government's last Research Assessment Exercise (2008) the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences did exceptionally well: nine (out of 13) research areas were judged to be in the top 10 nationally. Home to 7,000 students and 500 staff, the Faculty has an impressive track record for attracting funding. Research grant funding for the Humanities and Social Sciences is over £4m annually, and more than £1m is invested in scholarships for research students.
“The completion of ArtsTwo, along with the adjacent landscaping to improve the Novo Burial Ground, marks the achievement of more than 25-years work to develop the east side of the College campus. This includes the creation of an Arts Quarter, bringing together the ArtsOne and Laws buildings, the Lockkeeper’s Graduate Centre and the Westfield Student Village, the largest provision of on-campus accommodation and student facilities in London” Professor Philip Ogden, former Senior Vice-Principal of the College
“The Faculty is marked by some outstanding successes – independently confirmed by impressive rankings. In national university guides for 2011, seven disciplines, including Linguistics, Drama, Law and Geography, were judged to be in the UK top 10. In the 2010 National Student Survey, more than half of schools had ratings over 90 per cent for overall student satisfaction; a confirmation of the high quality of teaching across the Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary,” Professor Morag Shiach, Vice Principal, Humanities and Social Sciences.
History of the site The ArtsTwo site, which formerly housed the College's Maintenance Department and a car parts shop, is one of the last developments on the campus that fronts on to the Mile End Road. The building and its perimeter landscaping stitch together the east side of the campus and contribute to the urban character of the area. “The history of the ArtsTwo site dates back to the mid1980s, when the College set out a vision for the eastern part of the campus. Part of those expansion plans involved the Westfield student village and new academic buildings. ArtsTwo is really the end of that 25-year programme of development” Simon Neale, Head of Estates
ArtsTwo is unusual as it overlooks the Novo cemetery, the UK’s second oldest Spanish and Portuguese Jewish burial ground, dating back to 1733. This consecrated ground belongs to the Sephardi Jewish Congregation, the first Jews allowed back into England in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell after their expulsion in 1290 by Edward I. The College has worked closely with the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Congregation and the architect Seth Stein to integrate the new building with the perimeter of the burial ground. This landscaping is intended to preserve and enhance the cemetery and its history, with new information plaques for visitors.
As part of the landscaping, the Grade II-listed cemetery wall has been sensitively restored and now acts as a boundary between the contemplation space in front of ArtsTwo and the walkway that runs parallel to the cemetery. The foundations of part of the cemetery wall snake through the floor of ArtsTwo, visible through glass panelling underfoot. “Part of the campus master-planning was to enhance the cemetery as an historical asset and to improve the spaces around it,” explains Stafford Critchlow, Director of Wilkinson Eyre architects. New planting, cycle stands and paved seating areas have been installed outside the entrance of ArtsTwo to tie in with the College strategy of linked external squares throughout the campus.
“The cemetery enables visitors to draw sensory and intellectual stimulation. The obvious antiquity of the surviving section of the cemetery wall also has an appreciable aesthetic value, which is a feature of contrast and distinction when compared with many of the modern buildings around the site” Historic environmental assessment, Museum of London Archaelogy
Architecture In ArtsTwo, award-winning architects practice Wilkinson Eyre has designed an environmentally-responsive building with a number of innovative features. The 4,000-square metre edifice houses 38 academic offices, seven teaching spaces, including two dedicated to postgraduate study; a senior common room; a large, open plan office for the Leo Baeck Institute and another for the School of History administration. ArtsTwo also has one of the largest lecture theatres at Queen Mary, plus a purposebuilt film and drama studio.
“ArtsTwo is not to be seen as an individual building icon but very much as stitching it to the rest of the campus, solving what was a very tricky little corner in the campus” Stafford Critchlow, Director, Wilkinson Eyre
“Wilkinson Eyre has managed to create a building that is architecturally distinguished, and a very pleasant place to be. It’s quiet and light and people like working here,” says Professor Julian Jackson, Head of History. A glazed corridor on the public side of ArtsTwo acousticallyshields academic offices from the hustle and bustle of Mile End Road below, while allowing natural ventilation and increased energy efficiency.
Professor Ogden describes the upper-floor corridor as “a stunning piece of architecture; a combination of good aesthetics and sound practical design”. The double-height of this ingenious ‘buffer zone’ corridor acts as a solar chimney, drawing up heat to the top of the building and out. In addition, the exposed concrete of the building interior provides thermal mass to regulate the temperature, day and night. Another innovation is the rows of aerodynamic-shaped, aluminium fins, fitted to the exterior of the glazed corridor. The fins act like a sun screen, protecting the offices from solar glare and a build-up of heat. ArtsTwo is also built on antivibration pads to reduce the rumble of the London
Underground that runs beneath. This feature is particularly beneficial to users of the building’s 300-seat lecture auditorium. The lecture theatre is an acoustically-sealed ‘egg’, a curved interior form, clad in beech slats. It’s a design detail repeated in the ribbon of curved beech wrapped around the main staircase. “The wood elements feel very handcrafted, which we were keen to achieve as a sculptural contrast to the more rigid façades of the rest of the building,” explains Stafford Critchlow, Director, Wilkinson Eyre. The new film and drama studio, which seats 60 people, projects as a first-floor glazed box over the Mile End Road. This state-of-the-art space is acoustically-isolated, can be blacked out, and is equipped with high-specification lighting.
As Jen Harvie, Acting Head of Drama explains: “We moved our Masters programme from the Boiler Room at the back of the People’s Palace. It was a quirky and fun space, but it was full of pipes and all performances had to work around the peculiarities of the room. The new studio is extremely flexible and adaptable for all kinds of performance.”
At the main entrance of ArtsTwo, adjacent to the cemetery, is a contemporary public space for quiet contemplation and reading. The site was designed by Coe Design, which specialises in landscapes in historical settings. Coe Design also created the building’s roof terrace - an inner courtyard overlooked by the academic offices.
The architectural project also adds a major art commission to the urban landscape of Mile End.
“The contrasting textures of materials and plants provide rich detail, a variety of viewpoints and a garden full of interest for the people who use the building,” says Jenny Coe, Coe Design. “The native plant species and loose stones are also sustainable and ecological design features to attract and support wildlife.”
Wilkinson Eyre collaborated with Peckham-based artist Jacqueline Poncelet to design the distinctive, blue, glass shell which clads the exterior of the drama studio. For ArtsTwo, Poncelet used a digital printing technique, Okalux, directly on the glass tiles, with a stacked books motif. This symbol of learning makes a make a visual statement on the public-facing side of the building “The books are repeated in tones of blue, multiplied to create patterns, forming images half reminiscent of geological structures, half of architectural structures,” explains Poncelet. “The books symbolise the gathering, storing, sharing and growing of knowledge; a common thread that runs through all the diverse subjects of the humanities,” says Poncelet.
“If you were to describe somewhere similar it’s probably the courtyard of the Museum of Modern Art in New York where you are right in the heart of the city, and can hear the hum of the city behind, but it’s still a serene space” Stafford Critchlow, Director, Wilkinson Eyre
Art Commissioned artworks in the building have been chosen to complement the architecture, which offers a light, quiet and spacious ambience. Much of the new art is intended to reflect the theme of migration and identity, a Faculty research theme. Vibrant portraits of Distinguished Visiting Professors in the Humanities, George Steiner and Stuart Hall also adorn the walls.
‘Flag 2 ‘Home, Hogar’ (164cm X 104cm, fired ceramic on MDF frame)
nicholasarroyaveportela.com The ceramic work, installed on floor one of the ArtsTwo building, is by London-based artist Nick Arroyave-Portela. Part of a body of work entitled ‘Todo Sobre Mi Padre’ (‘All About My Father’), which Arroyave-Portela describes as “a rhythmic and contemplative series of wall pieces looking at all aspects of my identity”.
The image refer specifically to his Spanish father’s various migration routes during his life, and the impact this had on Arroyave-Portela’s sense of belonging growing up in Oxford. The work also looks at the question of memory, migration and identity from a universal point of view. Arroyave-Portela says: “This body of work is more than a tribute to my father and his memory. It is really about my re-connection and understanding of what a sense of place means to me.” Oxford-born artist, ArroyavePortela’s work is on public display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Leeds City Gallery,
among others. His largeframed ceramic wall pieces explore his identity through the genres of landscape and cartography. claudyjongstra.com The pair of vast wall tapestries, which now hang in ArtsTwo, are the first UK commissions for internationally-acclaimed Dutch artist, Claudy Jongstra. Claudy Jongstra and five members of her studio worked on the two bespoke tapestries for the ground-floor foyer. Her work combines fabrics in wool, mixed with silk, linen and organza to produce refined textures. Using her skills as a colourist, Jongstra chose a strong yellow tone in both tapestries, using the traditional dye plant, weld to contrast, yet
Tapestries situated in the ArtsTwo building foyer by studio Claudy Jongstra
complement, the vivid purple floor in ArtsTwo. Natural colours from St John’s wort and onion, which gives an orange hue, were also used. The horizontal tapestry, designed as a lively, expressive landscape, is the longest that the Jongstra studio has made as one piece. Both wall hangings use wool from two old sheep breeds, the long haired Drenthe Heath combined with the Gotlands pels, felted together with silk and linen fibres. Felting, carding and spinning are traditional yarn-making techniques used in the ArtsTwo commissions. For commissions and enquiries contact Jongstra’s UK representative, willer.co.uk Jongstra is best known for her tapestries and textile wall-pieces. In her work she stimulates natural heritage and cultural heritage by innovating old technical crafts in new contemporary art pieces. She has Jongstra tapestry in ArtsTwo foyer transformed felt, industrializing the process while keeping the textile’s handmade feel. She runs her own garden with only traditional European dyeing plants to design new colours. Jongstra also breeds her own rare breed Drenthe Heath sheep. The preservation and application of the old techniques of carding and spinning to make yarn is important to Jongstra’s work. As a result she has won several prizes for the use of sustainable and innovative materials.
zoebenbow.co.uk Work by Hackney-based artist Zoe Benbow is already on display in the Lock-Keeper’s Cottage on the College’s Mile End campus. ‘Mayo Landscape’ was especially commissioned for ArtsTwo and is based on drawings made from the cliff tops of the coastal landscape of County Mayo, Ireland. The painting plays with colour and process to willfully hook the audience into an unfamiliar space. The image is celebratory in nature and aims to communicate a sense of awe and enjoyment in our visual world. ‘Mayo Landscape’ (158cm x 214cm, Oil on canvas)
“Reference is made to European landscape genre, as a construct to examine established perceptions of our place in the world. Traditional perspective is subverted to create a taut and finely balanced image that plays across the picture surface,” says Benbow. Zoe is a professional artist based in London, with a painting studio close to Broadway Market, E8. Benbow graduated with an MA from The Royal College of Art in 1989. She had a solo show at Hay Hill Gallery, Cork Street, W1 in February 2012 and is represented in many public and private collections including Manchester City Art Gallery, The British Council and The Royal Palace of Jordan.
Tweet about the events using #QMArtsTwo
Scan the code to find out more about the opening events for ArtsTwo QR readers can be downloaded for free online. Data charges may apply. Please contact your network provider for more details.
www.qmul.ac.uk/artstwo