Features

By Eleanor Young

When Nottingham University asked the newly formed Make Architects to expand its Jubilee Campus, it must have felt confident the practice could deliver a striking landmark that would work brilliantly for its occupants. After all, its founder, Ken Shuttleworth, was fresh from his role as Foster’s partner in charge on the Gherkin at 30 St Mary Axe in the City. Now that it’s completed, however, the practice’s first major project disappoints as a bundle of confusing buildings overly preoccupied with image and efficiency.

Nottingham University has nearly 168ha split over two campuses. As the neighbouring Raleigh bicycle company factory has shrunk, the university has acquired more space. First came the demise of Sturmey-Archer gears, which made room for the building of the Jubilee Campus in 1999 under a Michael Hopkins masterplan. This was characterised by modest but quietly powerful timber-clad buildings set along a new lake. In later phases more Hopkins’ buildings gradually gathered around the lake – a business school and the National College for School Leadership helped create a campus of distinction and identity. Then the university switched horses. Enter Make. (p)The university wanted a new ‘front door’ that would provide improved facilities and a link to its spin-off businesses on the other side of Triumph Road, which runs through the Jubilee campus. Make’s masterplan provides a pedestrian connection to the city via a perfectly pleasant diagonal walkway with rills down the centre, rather grandly dubbed a boulevard. Anyone familiar with Foster and Partners’ More London scheme, on which Shuttleworth worked, will recognise the diagonal thrust of the landscape.

There are three new blocks, one clad in zinc with rounded ends, and two clad in terracotta with angled walls. At the centre is the rather ugly 60m high sculpture Aspire. The zinc-clad block, the Gateway, straddles Triumph Road with offices to let; the Amenities Building provides a muddled mix of uses, from flats for visiting academics to Muslim prayer rooms and a restaurant; and International House accommodates Chinese studies and English language teaching among other uses.

Make’s designs acknowledge the importance of landscape within the university. The terracotta-clad buildings, inspired by the sandstone outcrops on which some of Nottingham’s landmarks sit, face up and out towards the city, and all three are conceived as growing up from the ground. The material quality of the cladding is good and precisely detailed, but, frankly, these structures are alien to their context, show pieces without humour or generosity, more business park than campus.

As I am shown around by two project architects and Richard Wigginton, the university’s head of capital projects, it is clear the needs of the estate office have taken priority. Common elements, grey carpet tiles, standard stair treads, and so on make maintenance easier. Areas that could give life to the buildings and allow them to breathe are harder to maintain and therefore eschewed. Even the stairs, often a welcome opportunity to show a bit of imagination, get little attention here – architects shouldn’t waste money on stairs, says Wigginton. In keeping with the buildings’ pared down aesthetic, floor plates offer maximum flexibility – they could be configured for almost anything. The interiors of International House and the Amenities building are essentially characterless, which is ideal when they might have to be reconfigured from year to year.

Of course, as in any office, the users will bring life to the building. In the Amenities Building and International House, academics and administrators will enjoy the wide window reveals and the views beyond. The way the external angles translate into sloping attic ceilings gives an unexpected cosiness to some of the rooms. The staggered roof terraces of International House look like they were designed be stuffed full of mechanical plant, but could be little sun traps for those working in the offices. The Muslim prayer rooms and chaplaincy rooms will perhaps make some part of these long, dull, dark corridors their own, while the few open-plan areas are likely to be as pleasant as those in any spec office. Everyone can be accommodated within the grid.

A bigger problem is the undifferentiated spaces, the lack of hierarchy within the buildings. Some entrances have modest lobbies, but newcomers will find navigating confusing. The western entrance to International House, for example, opens abruptly onto a rather clumsy stair before the corridor turns and runs off around the core. It feels like a back door – if that – yet this is the entrance that links the building to the rest of the campus. Conversions have some excuse for rabbit warren circulation, new-build does not. And Make hasn’t tried to help with orientation in terms of views, light or linked spaces (unless you count the corridors).

The Gateway building has a little more internal space to play with. Its entrance acts as the main reception to the Jubilee Campus, a status that earns it a three-storey atrium, lit from above by some very hard-working sun catchers from Monodraught. They don’t add to solar gain but contribute plenty of light and air. The Gateway’s single-storey bridge across Triumph Road has been left open as a breakout space for young businesses that are being ‘incubated’ in this building. The one obvious architectural attempt to break up the corridor is a spiral staircase between the bridge and the business end of the building, in which the casing is cut through to allow long views. But the fact that the inside of the staircase is red almost negates these glimpses, and the balustrades are painfully ugly and clunky – especially coming from an office so steeped in the Foster experience.

Is this scheme so disappointing because of the comparison with Foster buildings and the expectations raised when Shuttleworth set up Make? In 2004, I groaned at the announce­ment that Make might be collaborating with Carey Jones and its associated corporate dullness. But the Leeds-based practice’s recently completed Soundhouse, wrapped in black rubber, shows that its designers can create inventive interesting buildings. The interiors of the Nottingham trio from Make just look like nobody cared.

Except perhaps on sustainability. This is the one area where this project team attempted to develop the ethos of the rest of the campus. Ground source heat pumps have been installed in the lake and are the only form of heating and cooling in the buildings. Rain­water harvesting is also in the mix. More significant was the team’s self-imposed rule of a maximum of 50% glazing on the facade to reduce energy use. The large areas of glazing originally planned for the east facades of International House and the Amenities building were ditched and a slightly random window pattern imposed. The deep reveals should bring extra light into the buildings. This environmental agenda is university-wide and its most interesting manifestation is a series of houses on the main campus, constructed under the auspices of the School of the Built Environment (see panel, page 33).

Nottingham University has proved in the past that it can commission good buildings, not just Hopkins’ work but a rich arts centre by Marsh Grochowski. Make’s three buildings have a stop-and-stare factor, but the emphasis on efficiency and a lack of true architectural imagination has sucked any life out of them.