Dock Master - University of East London architectural reconstruction

Architectural Review, The, March, 2001 by Peter Davey

With elegance and economy, a university campus in a previously neglected area of east London offers a new view of academe, and a possible focus for the local community.

The University of East London (UEL) is one of those which emerged in the '90s, when British polytechnics were made into universities. Much criticism has been made of the results, some justified, but a lot from snobbery. Yet one thing is clear: the change in status gave the new organizations control over their own finances, which previously had been run by local authorities. So they became able to work out their own accommodation policies, and the more creative ones decided to sell off the outlying parts of their often very scattered estates, and consolidated their properties on fewer concentrated centres giving, often for the first time, a sense of academic and social cohesion. The latest in a series is UEL's Docklands campus, on the north bank of the Royal Albert Dock, miles to the east of the capital's second financial centre in the Isle of Dogs. The Royal Albert Dock is a vast rectangular expanse of water originally lined with warehouses and full of the trade of the last years of Empire. Now the ships have long gone, the warehouses after them. Water fowl and rowing fours cause the only ripples in the calm water. The site is fundamentally a long thin strip between the water and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). North of the rail tracks is a pleasant low-density '30s suburb, presumably built for people that worked in the docks, who clearly lived in a great deal more comfort than their grandfathers that laboured in the Victorian docks further up river towards the pool of London. To the east are wastes still largely untouched by millennial prosperity. To the west are some grim behemoths, large object buildings spewed out by the late '90s boom; forming the horizon behind them are the towers of Canary Wharf dominated by Cesar Pelli's skyscraper.

DLR's Cyprus station determined the focus of the new campus. You get off the train and walk south, drawn irresistibly towards the mighty red portico carved out of the building itself. An elliptical forecourt, lined to left and right with gabions, is scarcely preparation for what happens at the top of the generous ramp which leads up through the portico. I was there on a beautiful sunny day, and emerged into what appeared to be a different world: white and urbane, airy and clean looking over the vast lake of the old dock, then over the runway of City Airport to the Thames, then further to the south bank of the river which forms the horizon. I was in the arcaded University Square, busy with students strolling about, chattering or lazing in the sunshine. Clearly the archetypal quad which descends to us from medieval monasteries still works socially, no matter how it is made.

In execution, the UEL piazza is very different from its revered predecessors. It is essentially Modern, in an almost old-fashioned sense, with long window strips alternating with white opaque strips of rendered insulation. Columns of the arcade are simply the rolled steel members of the frame, exposed and made silver with intumescent paint. (As Robert Maxwell has pointed out, this substance has allowed the slenderness and elegance of the whole steel order which, before the change of regulations, would have had to be covered up in extremely cludgy fireproofing material.) At the southern corners of the square, the Modernist steel order achieves heraldic drama. On each side, a silver column almost detached from the main bulk of the building rises four and a half storeys from ground to roof (which tilts up, emphasizing the effect) to form the flank of an implied proscenium, framing the view south over the water.

At ground level, the square has the usual basic functions of a modern college: lecture theatre, bar, bookshop, cafe, media centre and so on. Within the calm and inexpressive facades above are the teaching areas in which spaces are divided according to needs of individual departments that will doubtless change over time. On top are studio spaces, large volumes with shaded clerestoreys adding to light from the windows.

On the east side of the square, the biggest internal space of the whole complex, a long toplit street, is heralded by a portico in a glass wall, which allows you to look down along the whole volume. The section is excellent, with carefully modulated cool north light making the whole place luminous. Possibly because the campus is new, or maybe because I was not there at the right time of day, the internal street seemed more utilitarian and lifeless than its equivalents in Scandinavia or Germany. I assume that the rather austere atmosphere will gradually change under the attentions of generations of students; the bridges will become places for casual chats, and the long street will become a real social space (the sun cannot shine all the time in the square). Already the little cafe at the east end is humanizing the place.