Architecture in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Britain
Factories of Creativity: Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design at King's Cross. Text and pictures by Carlo Menon
Introduction The first time I visited Central Saint Martins it was to attend a conference on architectural competitions organised by the Architectural Foundation. I arrived from King's Cross station and was guided to the Platform Theatre, at the end of the main alley, an autonomous facility integrated in the school. After the conference I couldn't resist spending some more time in the building. I knew very little about it. Its being part of a large development plan of the area around King's Cross; its Head being Jeremy Till, whose witty lecture on spatial agency and education I had attended a few months before in Brussels; the name of the architects, although I couldn't spell it exactly; and the fact that their office is on the Canal, near Angel, only a few miles away from there. 1
The idea of writing this essay came as I was literally enjoying being in the building and visiting around, from the cafeteria to the supplies shop in front of it, from the welding workshop to the art studios. The people looked active and healthy. Despite the entirely translucent roof of the central alley, one didn't perceive the bad weather outside. But when it rains, I was told later, the covering produces a unique sound. Invisible to others, I felt like a curious visitor in a centre for arts – say, the Palais de Tokyo – temporarily transformed by the curators into a creative factory.
The school has invested – and deeply transformed – a compound of nineteenth-century industrial buildings, once linked to the railways and the canal. The main building, called the Granary Building, is listed (Grade II).
I decided not to read any articles on the project, founding my analysis on the few days that I would later spend on site: the building should speak by itself. Defining the rules of this essay as I was walking, I also decided not to play the ghost, allowing myself, every now and then, to talk to people asking innocent questions. “Is this the only place for smokers?” I asked while borrowing a lighter. “No, there is a whole covered area behind the corner, right there”. “How much are the school fees, please?” – at the students' office. “It depends on the course you are taking”. For textile design, the first discipline that came to my mind, it is around £9000 per year (I swallow). “Thank you. By the way, how long have you been using the building?”. “This is our second year here. As you can see there is no decoration yet, as there is no interior design course!” the young assistant told me at the desk, nodding at the 2
unvarnished plywood panels used as partition walls... I couldn't but smile, abstaining from replying, not knowing if he was being sarcastic. Indeed, the aesthetic of the building is quite bare, but clearly designed.
The view of an art studio. All the wirings and ventilation shafts are carefully laid out, while the partitions can be easily replaced.
So, where did the money go? What parti did the architects and the client take in the transformation of such a huge building? Certainly it went partly into careful detailing, into the robustness of materials, and into some virtuous features: a transparent lift hung to an old bricks façade, the large, technological rooftop of the central alley, the large glazed internal façades looking onto it. Of course, and most of all, money went into space itself. Renovating such a volume is expensive only arithmetically, multiplying a standard building costs per square meter ratio to the large alleys and other servant spaces, the technical equipment needed for the air control and the fire safety for the 4000 users of the building, the generous workshops and the number of disciplines taught in the school, plus the theatre. The little I knew about Jeremy Till, and the little I knew about the main principle governing the pedagogy of such a school, is that space – and even: vacant space – has a great value. Anne Lacaton & JeanPhilippe Vassal's theory of “plus” has certainly played a role in the development of the project: for the same budget, it is preferable to build more space, at the expenses of some comfort or materials. They applied this strategy for the School of Architecture they designed in Nantes (2009). The surplus of space becomes social space, a political promise for the future. 3
But in Central Saint Martins, comfort is no less a value than space. Is this what makes this building an interesting piece of British architecture? But first, is this building, its renovation, British architecture? Could it be Norwegian, like the slides I had just seen at the conference? Or a French high-graded art school, like that old leisure building transformed by Bernard Tschumi under the direction of Alain Fleischer, that I visited years ago in Tourcoing, near Lille? French contractors, although as expensive, rarely obtain such proper details we witness in British architecture. And, the trickiest thought: could it be a building by Jacques Herzog & Pierre De Meuron, a de-dramatised translation of the principles governing the Tate Modern to a learning programme? Isn't Central Saint Martins a mere “international project”, designed somewhere in the hyper-world of the architectural discipline (the contemporary Beaux-Arts system) and catapulted almost randomly on planet Earth, preferably in a global city, next to an international railway station? Couldn't it be Belgian, German, Luxembourgian? Or even Brazilian? These were my first impressions of the building transformed by Stanton Williams Architects 1 in the scarce 30 minutes I spent there after the conference. On the evening before, at the AA School, Pier Vittorio Aureli described his practice Dogma as “nomadic” between Rotterdam, where he and Martino Tattara taught and started the studio; Brussels, where they live and where they recently established their office; London and Basel, where they teach respectively. For Aureli, this mobility reflects the post-modern condition of knowledge after the Bologna Process begun in 1999: “the University is to the city of the 21st century what the factory was in the 20th century”, the ultimate place of production 2. Less than an hour after leaving the building, being myself already crossing the French country after passing the Channel on a train, I came to the idea that Central Saint Martins had undoubtedly a British character, while at the same time being part of a larger idea of what architecture is and has to be built, the outcome of a larger world view. The pattern of education has changed, for those who can afford it. Jeremy Till, a left-wing British intellectual, both extravagant and absolutely precise in his thought – at least, this was my impression on the first and only occasion I've had of hearing him talk – stresses the importance of the unfinished in architecture, a notion that he links with the idea of mutual knowledge 3: finiteness, cleanliness and rigidity versus indetermination, appropriation and 'open-work', for a collective construction of space. Something which control-freak, ordinary architects, those large majority of architects whose favourite movie is The Fountainhead, as he likes to point out, have in profound horror. If Jeremy Till wasn't yet Head of the school when the project was being discussed and built, there is nonetheless something of these ideas in the actual building. Returning to visit the ambiguous Central Saint Martins, I decided to keep in mind these questions: Which of its features are inscribed in the lineage of British architecture? Does the building and its organisation reflect the theory expressed by Dogma, that the academy is the 21st century factory, centre of 4
production of ideas, of sociability and, ultimately, of bio-politics? What is, in the terms of Jeremy Till, the “spatial agency� of the building towards the school's pedagogy? Is it a democratic space?
The shopping centre and the factory Like it or not, the most appropriate typology to describe the spatial organisation of the building is the shopping centre. All the programme is contained in a closed envelope, mostly inward looking. The size, approximately 180 meters long and 100 meters wide, on four levels, is comparable to that of the facilities of Euston station, the British Museum, the Brunswick. It is strategically situated in the middle of the largest urban redevelopment area in Europe. Large circulation areas distribute the activities, with a central atrium offering an architectural surprise. Transparencies and see-throughs, almost shopping windows, enhance the feeling of an on-going general activity throughout the building.
The large circulations expose the school's life and act like a stage for possible encounters.
Without going further comparing students to consumers, and attacking the commodification of education, the similarities finish here. Central Saint Martin has in no way the glittering tiles, the smooth escalators and the junk details of a retail store. On the contrary, the building itself speaks the care that the architects have employed in designing and supervising its construction. The aesthetics conveyed by the project addresses a more cultivated and demanding 5
The increasing presence of architecture within the school, from mere 'space', to vector, to icon.
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public, a public whose tastes are shared by the architects themselves: the realisation of such a project is clearly the outcome of an equal dialogue between the client and the designers, with high demands on both sides. Through the exposed concrete and similar use of 'naked' materials, the atmosphere is almost severe, although tempered by the colourful students and the objects – models, dresses, chairs, posters – that they leave around. Most of the time, the architecture remains in retreat, experienced in distraction, but facilitating the pedagogical activities; sometimes it steps forward to stimulate a visual interaction. This synergy of architecture and “living matter” is well-balanced. From time to time, and mostly in public places rather than in the most used areas, architecture asks for all the attention. This is the case, for instance, with the cantilevered rehearsal room at the back of the building, or the old inner façade of the Granary Building with its transparent lift.
The definition of the space is thus suspended between the generic and specific. Vast areas of the building, not only in the public zone, remain flexible and easy to appropriate by teaching activities and temporary exhibitions, while maintaining their identity. On the other hand, other volumes have been invested in quite a condensed manner, especially the workshops. The fashion design section, occupying the roof of one of the existing buildings, resembles an assembly line that stretches for the whole length of the building, passing from the weaving and knitting machines to the fashion studios. Crossing the space one can feel the hard concentration, the indecisions and the high level of competition of the students at work here. 7
Another industry-like environment is that of the ceramic workshops.
Besides the shopping centre, the other analogy that comes to mind when visiting the building is, indeed, that of the factory. To convey this image, the physical remains of the site's industrial past are almost contingent, as all the new equipment points towards the same direction: the lighting system, almost exclusively based on bare fluorescent lamps; the concrete floors of the studios; the lettering on the doors; the massive aspiration shafts running on the ceilings; the large lifts allowing to move materials around the school; the storage spaces inside the studios, simply enclosed by a wire mesh. The luxury of such a school also means dirt and banal environment. Art itself has moved from the 'heroic' period of the individual genius to embrace a more Warhol-like idea of desacralised 'work'. 4 Production and consumption, education and exhibitionism, sacralisation and desacralisation are inextricably bound at Central Saint Martins. The organisation of a simple programme like the library is symptomatic of this attitude: dense shelves for books and magazines on one side are counterbalanced by large, undetermined spaces where students sit, discuss, work on the computer, lie on the carpeted floor, or take a nap on a sofa. But from every corner one sees the others, taking part in the pantomime of creative learning. The idea of the academy as a fundamental place for the production of capital in the post-fordist era becomes more and more evident. The organisation of creative work lies no more, or not specifically, in the concentration of machines, be it sewing machines, model-making workshops or advanced computer technologies—it goes far beyond. It lies in the interactivity of students and 8
teachers; in ideas sketched during a pause at the cafeteria; in connections established at a party; in a school open on the city (the ground floor of the Granary Building and the transversal alley at its back are open to the public), and a city entering the school through lectures, hired venues at the theatre, head-hunting and start-up facilities. Important private companies have contributed to the costs, thus keeping at hand this breeding ground for young talents: LVMH paid for the double lecture hall that bears now its name, which probably costed a tenth of one of their advertising campaign. 5 The enormous potential of such an integrated learning project can be looked both ways: as the fertile ground for a democratic, and critic, understanding of the arts, and at the same time as a factory whose surplus of production will end up in the luxury goods companies, the only which haven't been touched by the world crisis.
A reversal Strikingly, when it comes to working people, the building reveals a positioning which I had never noted anywhere else: the balance of power between the students and the staff is inverted. Almost escaping master–servant dialectics, the students seem here to be the unchallenged masters. The tendency to reduce the distance between teacher and student can generally be considered as a good thing, especially in a practice-lead environment: more exchanges, personal or intersubjective tutorials, collaborations. Teachers are very young, they admit not to know everything, but guide the students in the process. Conversely, being a teacher is an opportunity to grow up through the students, to the point that sometimes the roles are confused. As a consequence, the aura around professorship is decreasing, a phenomenon that we can witness even in space: the time of teachers' accommodations seems now revolved (at least a reserved parking lot is assigned), and even the private offices for their own research get really small. A school building has other priorities: educational spaces, the library, the refectory, workshops, administration. At Central Saint Martins, where starting the project from scratch, the teachers and the staff could have obtained good working conditions, this is still the case. What is striking is that everything seems spatially generous and well-lit, ideal for practical and creative work, but the offices. Secluded in glazed boxes in the middle of their studio or workshop, almost naked in this absence of privacy, isolated from the teachers of other courses, the position of the workers seems very low rated when compared to the facilities provided to the students. In a factory, similar spaces are attributed to the responsible of the machineries. Paradoxically, such a huge building already seems in lack of qualitative space! At the library, for instance, it has even been preferred to keep some student tables close to all the windows, relegating the librarians in a borrowed-light, glazed box in the middle of the floor. The guardian at the entrance of the main alley stands up, not having a designated sitting post. If “free space� is a value to defend in the ideology of the workflow, here there is clearly a disproportion. 9
Everything looks at the service of the student: privileged, maybe too pampered? In the competition among art schools, this new building for Central Saint Martins clearly sets the bar of commodity for the student-client very high. Informal, recreational spaces, up to four cafeterias, a rooftop terrace: the luxury frame offered is very demanding in terms of space. The quality and beauty of the architecture notwithstanding, doesn't this project rest upon the same occupational logic of the commercial buildings that grow in the surroundings? Conspiracy theories among students already tell that the building was actually designed as a shopping centre, ready to open its doors once the school project will crack.
The concrete work is very sober and perfectly realised. All the joints with other materials, such as handrails, wirings have been are careful.
Serious work Even if that was the case, the work on the building must be acknowledged. In the modern, ever-revolving era when uses change so rapidly, it is clever to make buildings that allow other forms of occupancy in the future. Still considering that having a high-rate art school in the rising Kings Cross area is a welcoming sign, it is not unlikely that one day the high commercial value of the building will push Central Saint Martins to sell it, moving to a new centrality in London. The architects bear responsibility for a number of things, besides the client's desires: towards the client's employees and the client's guests, towards the building itself – especially when it is listed – towards the city and towards 10
the future generations. I believe that some of these responsibilities had an impact on the design of the building. The Granary Building underwent a restoration, supervised by English Heritage, that will prolong it stability and architectural features for many years. The shell of the building is robust (any judgement on the translucent roof of the atrium suspended) and numerous accesses have been created, as well as eight large concrete staircases, plus the ones in the Granary Building. The building techniques employed distinguish between permanent elements and more flexible partitioning and equipment, and the difference remains legible. This distinction is also present in the design and building process: the work by Stanton Williams Architects was mostly limited to the former, whereas the interior fit-out was dealt with by firm Pringle Brandon, which explains some contradictions in the aesthetics used (for instance, in the Granary Building, the staircase towards the library and some of the partitioning systems used there seem to come out of a commercial building catalogue). But all in all, Stanton Williams' aesthetic values, in this project, are immediately present to the eye. Modern materials like exposed concrete and full-frame windows, post-modern low-budget space typically made of plywood partitioning, concrete floors and exposed techniques, a certain use of technology (the exposed lift and the rooftop: certainly not low-tech, but not totally hi-tech) and the carefully untouched industrial remains, all sum up to a palette that makes sense today. The confrontation, even when concentrated in a few cubic meters, is gentle. The colours are never shocking, but not neutral either. As said, architecture in Central Saint Martins supports creative learning, without asking for too much attention. But when a student looks to it, there he finds a stimulating support for his thoughts. If the school is still very clean, we are far from the aesthetics of cleanliness or ascetic silence of some other learning centres, and at the opposite of Sanaa's Rolex Learning Centre at Lausanne (2010; a project that shares with Central Saint Martins a similar concern in attracting prospective students). Given the apparent simplicity and scarcity of materials used, it would be a mistake to think that these operations are simple or cheap. Here we enter properly the universe of the architects, the way they feel materials and articulate their gestures. We grasp, probably, the purpose of their work. Even when designing such a big adventure, the pleasure of the architect still remains in the proper design of similar elements. Without doubt it is not the research of an architectural “truth” nor any consideration about “necessity” that moved Stanton Williams, although all materials are presented with a certain brutality. The approach to the existing building is absolutely not the one of a rigorous restoration. The presence of the past is a mere occasion, a drawing constraint, if not an opportunity to justify contemporary architecture on its basis. The integration of new architectural materials is quite always witty and playful, one material enhancing the perception of the other. Finally, what animates the approach of these details is, in my opinion, a research for the effect both visual and tactile, and a private architectural play of memories from the history of architecture. 11
A section of the 'transept', the internal public street connecting the Granary Building with the main atrium.
The richness of the existing palette of materials has been clearly enhanced. 12
The joints reveal a great work of both the designers and the builders.
Even in definitely servant spaces, like in this enclosed staircase in the Granary Building, the listed parts of the building have been cured. 13
Not being afraid of form and multiplicity in the visual signals, but without showing off too much, and without tragedy: can this attitude be identified as typical of British architecture? Maybe this is true with the cream of it, and when the project is not about some formalistic engineering challenges. The question is interesting but the answer is debatable, as it is impossible to say if similar experiences in other countries have a direct or distant link with the British tradition. The recent work of 51N4E for the C-Mine cultural centre in Genk, Belgium (2011) reveals a similar approach and quality, and the question wether Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron could have made such a project remains open.
A challenge By visiting the building today, it is very easy to separate the architecture from the activities within it. For once, computer-assisted techniques of architectural imaging couldn't do better than reality. Leaning out one of the suspended walkways of the main atrium, framed by a geometrically-organised glazed faรงade, one perceives the almost domestic scene of a pink-haired student sitting on a chair, instructing a collaborator on the positioning of the drawings to exhibit. Turning back, an alien student, 1,9 meters high, wearing optical striped leggings and a furred rabbit mask that covers her head fully, serves as the eye-catching foreground to the photogenic glimpse of the concrete staircases climbing under the translucent roof. I am more used to school walls plastered with posters, pins, scratches and traces of spray paint. Here, no one dared to do such things yet, willingly or unwillingly. Even the toilets are untouched by the real life of a school. Probably this is a matter of time. Documenting the process through which, from separate, a new building and its new life progressively melt together would be very interesting. When will the first graffiti appear? Will the student be researched and condemned? Or will Jeremy Till be the one, in disguise, to make the first one? On these simple things will depend the way un which the building will serve the school's pedagogic tasks more that attracting newcomers. As the official communication of the school explains, the gamble taken in this project has been to unify the disparate sections, in order to increase the collaboration and reciprocal influence among disciplines and students; this is what Jeremy Till would call mutual knowledge through space agency. But will it really work? Habits are difficult to change, and it will probably take some more years before the visual interaction generated by the building transforms into a more important intellectual and physical interaction among the different studies. Pedagogical programmes, though, are not integrated throughout all disciplines. In the architecture and visual art school I attended in Brussels, founded by painter and architect Henry Van de Velde in 1926 on the footprint of the Bauhaus, students of all art sections are forced, once a year, to move out of their disciplines to spend some time in another section (significantly, the architecture department of the school was fully dissociated years ago, both 14
physically and pedagogically, “for reasons of space”). At Central Saint Martins, probably for reasons of space as well (!), most of the studios and seminar rooms are not affected to a particular section, and they have to be booked. Also, all the hardware and software workshops are common, which facilitates some encounters: if a student in criticism needs to edit a video, he can use the school's lab, and if a stylist needs a metal structure to display his models, he can use the welding workshop. But far from the old myth of the total work of art, and far from the myth of horizontal collaboration promoted nowadays even in bio-factories like Google, things become more difficult when it comes to involve some performing art students for a video by a fine art project. Chains of command and individual cold feet do exist: another proof that even the best architecture can only support, maybe accelerate, but never transcend the evolution of behaviours of the people, be it teachers or students. What Central Saint Martin and its architects have achieved with certitude is the possibility for such a project.
Notes I would like to thank architect and teacher Oscar Brito (BA Architecture: Spaces and Objects) for accompanying me in otherwise inaccessible areas of the building, and for providing me the detailed architectural plans reproduced here. 1
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“Stanton Williams was founded by Alan Stanton and Paul Williams in 1985 following extensive individual careers in teaching and practice in the UK, Europe and the US. They have been working with fellow directors Gavin Henderson, Peter Murray and Patrick Richard for over 15 years in a studio, which now has an established team of 65 people with five directors and ten associates.” From the studio website, www.stantonwilliams.com. Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Dogma”. Lecture at the AA School of Architecture, London, 7 March 2013. I also discussed the topic with Pier Vittorio Aureli and his partner Martino Tattara at their office in Brussels, on April 1st, 2013. Some of these theories can be found in the catalogue of the exhibition (Dogma. Lndon: AA Publications, 2013) and in Pier Vittorio Aureli's The Project of Autonomy, Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008). The concept of political autonomy and the discussion on bio-politics are largely indebted to the work of Antonio Negri; see for instance his essay Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), co-authored with Michael Hardt. He refers the notion of mutual knowledge to Anthony Giddens. Jeremy Till, “The Expanding Field: Architecture Beyond the Object”. Lecture organised by Pauline Lefebvre at the Faculté d'Architecture La Cambre-Horta. Brussels (ULB), 8 November 2012. It would be a mistake to consider this mutation from a mere chronological perspective. Indeed, the Bauhaus already had a similar pedagogical project in 1919, when it was founded. On a different programme, the house-studio of Amédée Ozenfant designed by Le Corbusier in 1918 is also an interesting celebration of the industrial aesthetics (but not of collective learning). LVMH, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, is a worldwide company holding some of the most important brands in fashion design, cosmetics, jewellery and champagne. 15
List of published articles on Central Saint Martins Architectural Review
issue 1394 (April 2013) Will Hunter: London Schools Part Two: Central St Martin's by Stanton Williams
Monocle
February 2013 Gillian Dobias and Edurne Bargue単o Vida (dir.): Class Act - on Central Saint Martins (Online film and interview)
Dezeen
1st November 2012 Online film and interview: An art college should be "a blank canvas" - Paul Williams on Central Saint Martins
Disegno
issue No.2 (May 2012) Johanna Agerman Ross: The Move
Australian Design Review, issue 70 (February 2012) Rebecca Roke: Details: Long Life Loose Fit Le Monde magazine
14th January 2012 Marie-Helene Henley: Fabrique d'artistes
The Guardian
14th December 2011 Jonathan Glancey: Arts: Inside the art factory
Blueprint
November 2011 Owen Pritchard: King's Cross Reborn
Architecture Today
issue 223 (November 2011) MJ Long: Building: Creative Imagination; Stanton Williams at Central Saint Martins
Arts London News
4th November 2011 Kenny Wastell: Profile: Creating the Canvas for CSM
Architects Journal
3rd November 2011 Felix Mara: Building Study: Creative economy
Building Magazine
21st October 2011 Ike Ijeh: Projects: University of the Arts
Building Design
21st October 2011 Richard Wentworth: Buildings: Stanton Williams
Dezeen
18th October 2011 (online) Campus for Central Saint Martins by Stanton Williams
New York Times
17th October 2011 Suzy Menkes: Fashion & Style: Design School United the Old and the New
RIBA Journal
October 2011 Hugh Pearman: The New Central St. Martins
Building Design
28th January 2011 Amanda Birch: Technical: Refurbishment
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The list of the school premises as seen in a lift. 17
The ground floor. The Granary Building, where the main access is situated, is at the bottom of the drawing.
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The first floor.
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The second floor.
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The third floor.
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Data Studies:
Bartlett School of Architecture, Master in Architectural History 2012/13
Course:
Architecture in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Britain (BENVGAH1)
Tutor:
Professor Adrian Forty
Project:
Final essay
Deadline:
23 April 2013
Size:
3975 words, excluding notes and list of publications.
Student:
Carlo Menon
Contact:
carlommm@gmail.com, +44 7767 914 350
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