Stanton Williams

UCL East Marshgate . London

Stanton Williams . photos: © Hufton+Crow . + AJ

Marshgate is a 35,000sqm new breed of academic building that sits at the forefront of UCL East – the largest single expansion of University College London since it was founded in Bloomsbury nearly 200 years ago. Located on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and part of the SHIFT innovation district, the building is designed to create a collaborative and cross-disciplinary educational environment, focused on finding solutions to today’s biggest social, environmental and technological challenges, drawing on the shared knowledge and expertise of the many faculties that will converge at the new east London campus.

The landmark scheme, UCL’s largest single building, offers eight floors of open and adaptable teaching, research and collaboration spaces, for fields ranging from the creative industries to engineering, robotics, green technologies and global health – inviting new and interconnected modes of working, and entirely new research avenues and disciplines to emerge.

Different floors are clustered into a series of ‘neighbourhoods’, each with its own double-height collaboration space for informal meetings or exhibitions. The lower levels of the building include a network of publicly accessible spaces, with a café, public art displays and activities designed to draw schools, community organisations and the public into the life and heart of the building. Newly landscaped public realm provides an animated and accessible interface with both the adjacent riverside and wider Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

While public amenities predominantly populate the ground level, student, academic and research spaces are concentrated on the central floors, and highly specialised laboratories and workshops are primarily situated on the building’s upper levels.

A central, day-lit atrium vertically connects all the building’s activities, and highly visible circulation routes including stairs and escalators create further opportunities for chance encounters and interaction. Additional facilities include fabrication workshops, media studios, exhibition areas, design studios, lecture theatres, a library and an executive suite and spaces for collaboration and engagement with local businesses and communities.

In a departure from the trend towards glassy, light-weight curtain wall facades, Marshgate is built to echo the solidity and permanence of UCL’s original Bloomsbury campus. The massing also speaks to the site’s industrial past, referencing the buildings that historically populated the surrounding Lea Valley, while responding to the bold sculptural forms of the contemporary neighbouring Olympic structures. Comprised of in-situ and precast concrete panels in subtly graded tones and textures, the façade features timber board marked concrete on the lower floors and upper levels sculpted to optimise natural daylight and ventilation.

Durability and energy efficiency were at the front of Stanton Williams’ design approach. The BREEAM Excellent-rated building marries a strong and enduring identity with a highly flexible and long-life design approach to space and programming, and the solidity of the facade delivers high thermal performance and solar shading. Passive design strategies informed the overall building design, and the all-electric building is powered in part by renewable electricity, with the aim to reach net zero carbon by 2035 in keeping with the district’s wider sustainable energy strategy.
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