Central Saint Martins move into their new home

In the early days of the CETL Learning Spaces research project, we were invited to be involved in early discussions/events at the University of the Arts, London - partly instigated to enable staff to participate in thinking what kinds of learning spaces were needed for art and design in the new facility being built at Kings Cross.

Well the students and staff have just moved in and here is  Jonathan Jones/Guardian's take on the space.

So, all comments welcome from actual participants in this new environment. Would be a great opportunity to do a before/after evaluation of students/staff experiences of their learning spaces - but assume that, as usual, no-one will have the time, energy or resources.....

Photo taken from Guardian website. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris

Building Envelopes

Can't find out very much about developments on the TU Delft 'Building the Future' project - so any help here appreciated, in terms of how this work is affecting the design of the University itself.  Did find their Building Envelopes work, which looks at facade design more generally. The last conference in the series was called The Future Envelope 5 - Technology Transfer and was in May 201.  They have also produced a series of technical publications on facade design with IOS Press, Amsterdam in the series “Research in Architectural Engineering”. Maybe interesting to a few readers of this blog.

The difficulties of finding out about things

Had an email recently from someone working on the new University of Plymouth's Space Strategy; initially this will involve a consultation exercise and series of lectures/discussions. The project - which will be carried out by a team from the Architecture Department, and has a steering group from across the university (Estates and Facilities Management, Procurement and Sustainability, Strategic Planning and Teaching and Learning; the Education Department; and the Dean of Students) - seems like a potentially great model for learning spaces development.  So looking forward to keeping in touch with what they are doing.


But it also make me think how hard it is to find out what is going on at different universities and colleges, both in this country and elsewhere. There is no central place to 'catch' all the current learning spaces work going on. And because 'space' is such an amorphous word, doing an internet search throws up all sorts of - interesting yet miscellaneous - stuff. For example, Plymouth also has a SPACE project which is about inclusive assessment.... also very relevant to the subject of learning spaces, but - of course - not about re-designing the actual fabric. Similarly, Warwick has a project about 'opening up spaces' for student learning, that is, beyond the classroom setting. 


And I also came across an oldish post (from December 2010) about TU Delft, about a project called Building the Future. This was/is exploring specifically architectural education with the following aims:

- simplification of Bachelor´s education;
- reinforcement of design teaching and didactics;
- harmonisation of educational structure and alignment of the Master´s tracks;
- improvements to efficiency and assessment systems;

Which raises the related question (regularly explored on this blog) - where does learning spaces design begin and end? These kind of critical 're-locations' of what happens where and how in post-compulsory education also seem very important - particularly in the current climate, where universities and colleges are having to concentrate on how to make savings.  There are also major policy changes in the air in the UK that could offer opportunities to change the whole shape of post-compulsory education in quite critical and creative ways.  

Image from University of Plymouth's Architecture Department website