Work rest and play: after years of absence, a new university campus brings access to higher education back to the city of Gloucester.

Walking around the University of Gloucestershire's new campus with Peter Clegg, it is immediately apparent that architects Feilden Clegg Bradley passionately believe in, and profoundly understand, the significant contribution that education brings to our lives--not only in terms of architecture and regeneration, as a group of architects who love to build, but far more holistically. Education is undoubtedly in FCBA's blood, and while their extensive 25 year portfolio includes excellent arts, housing, and community projects, the fulfilment of the practice's priorities is perhaps most explicit in their work for education. FCBA design as users, and when designing places where people seek education, they repeatedly draw on collective personal experiences as students, parents, and teachers. So, a practice internationally known for its pioneering innovations in environmental sustainability and energy efficiency, gives more by reflecting on an equally significant commitment to the broader issues of economic and social sustainability.

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For more than 12 years, the UK's higher education sector has offered FCBA scope and opportunity to innovate, becoming a staple and producing significant buildings for Sunderland and Aston Universities, the Open University and London's Imperial College. However, despite such individual successes, richer results seem to have come when the practice has been engaged in long-standing client relationships, such as those with King Alfred's College in Winchester, and here in Gloucestershire; both of which have been nurtured since the early 1990s. By relying on a culture of learning and innovation, universities and colleges have historically acted as laboratories for architectural experimentation, and while commercial realities exist, academic institutions tend to prioritize long-term investment over quick-fix, fast-buck incentives--as has been FCBA's experience in Gloucestershire.

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Under the ambitious stewardship of the University's Vice Chancellor Dame Janet Trotter, the University of Gloucestershire has become one of the West Country's more committed architectural patrons, commissioning FCBA's award-winning intervention within the gothic revival quad of Francis Close Hall Campus in 1994, Edward Cullinan's Art Media and Design facilities at Pitville campus (AR April 1994), and most recently with its new Sport and Exercise Sciences campus in the heart of Gloucester.

On college land formerly occupied by a 1950s training college, the new campus was built to redress the uneven distribution of the county's higher education facilities, which since 1992 had been solely within Cheltenham. In 1996, FCBA were appointed to review the potential of the site, and to co-ordinate a long-term campus strategy.

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As the first stage, building stock was evaluated to see if any of structures from the previous five decades of development could be re-used. But, after considering flexibility of use, options for upgrading (particularly in terms of energy conservation), organizational efficiency, site distribution, and architectural quality, FCBA somewhat reluctantly concluded that demolition was the most feasible option. A decision that may have been regrettable in terms of embodied energy, but which increased opportunities to develop a high density, centralized strategy. This, while offering scope for expansion, would create sufficient critical mass within a modest first phase to give the fledgling campus its own identity and sense of place. So phase one, which was completed for the student intake of October 2002, included a new learning resources and teaching centre, sports science facility, and refectory, which collectively form a north-south armature that acts as the campus' heart and spine. Parallel to this sits another north-south terrace of 180 study rooms, all with private bathrooms, which terminates in a student common room and bar. It forms a communal cluster that, when linked to the facilities building by an east-west landscaped body of water, creates an entrance threshold for the site.

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Organizing buildings on this axis was central to the campus' environmental strategy, avoiding bleak north-facing study bedrooms, enabling both the learning resource centre and the sport sciences building to exploit diffuse north light (reducing dependency on artificial lighting), and optimizing the performance of the EU and DTI funded photovoltaic array recently installed onto the sport sciences building's distinctive tick-section roof. (An installation estimated to meet 50 per cent of the sport sciences building's demand, equivalent to 30 per cent of the precinct's combined load.) With this in place, attention focused on the most complex environmental problem: the internal conditioning of the learning resources centre.

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With the dramatic increase in IT provision in education, there are now many environmental variables to consider when seeking to create stable comfort levels. Learning from experience gained on the Martial Rose Library in Winchester, FCBA again adopted a hollow core displacement ventilation strategy: a system that responds well to the most onerous conditions during winter months, when maximum occupancy levels demand high air change targets without throwing away the free heat benefit that computers and people provide.

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Using standardized building components, the TermoDeck system converts a humble hollow-core precast concrete floor slab into a fully integrated circuit of thermal batteries: a modular structural system that contributes to the visual order of the spaces and which operates in a number of modes to provide seasonal environmental stability. In summer, night purging charges the ventilation circuit with coolth to temper incoming air, while exposed soffits are chilled to absorb surplus heat gains. In winter, trickle charge heating of the thermal mass warms a steady supply of fresh air, which gently heats the soffits and provides displacement ventilation through the floor. Heat recovery systems are also employed with a thermal wheel preheating incoming air, and exhaust air is discharged into the foyer to reduce uncomfortable down-draughts in the otherwise un-tempered glazed link.

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While budget limitations denied lavish materials, a degree of finesse has been achieved through the careful placing of finer quality materials, such as timber acoustic panelling in the atrium, and a Siza-esque limestone plinth in the foyer. The main disappointment, however, has been how security measures have denied users the permeability between the learning and teaching spaces as originally designed, resulting in the central atrium and core being isolated rather than a dynamic place of interaction. Still, this operational decision is clearly reversible.

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On the whole, the University is delightful to visit, and as more students move in, and when vegetation matures to soften the impact of the somewhat disappointing hard landscaping, it will undoubtedly host a thriving student community. FCBA's most significant achievement has been an ability to create a place with just three basic moves, producing a solution credited by the RIBA for being 'gimmick free' and offering 'a serious welcoming handshake for a new age HQ'. On choosing to invest in the higher education sector, FCBA have responded well to the strategic changes that have been implemented over the last 15 years. So, if Richard Feilden's prediction of an equivalent shift in secondary education over the next 15 years is correct, we look forward to seeing how FCBA re-apply their expertise to the UK's new generation of City Academy schools. 'We love designing schools,' says Feilden, with a smile that exhibits a slightly mischievous pleasure. A pleasure and optimism that seems to imply that regardless of what decisions central government may take, FCBA will be there to get under the skin of legislation, funding and targets to help produce the best schools that money can buy. After all, designing the building is only part of the battle, and FCBA fully understand this. Regardless of the practice's technical and theoretical competence, they have never adopted a highbrow architectural position. Instead, with sustained integrity, their investment in clients and long-term aspirations has brought them increasing popularity: a deserved reward for choosing not to engage in the architectural pageantry that tempts so many other practices away from the essence of longevity that all architects should pursue.

UNIVERSITY CAMPUS,

GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND

ARCHITECT

FEILDEN CLEGG BRADLEY

ARCHITECTS

Architects

Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects, Bath

Project team

Peter Clegg, Bill Gething, David Stansfield, Matt Somerville, Toby Lewis, Elena Marco Brugete

Project manager

Burnley Wilson Fish, John Burnley

Structural engineer

Whitby Bird & Partners

M&E engineer

WSP 

Photovoltaic consultant

ESD and PV Systems

Facade consultant

Montresor Partnership

Landscape consultant

Mitchell Harris Partnership

Photographs

Mandy Reynolds