London, United Kingdom
“Instead of demolition, we opted for a program of adaptive re-use wherever possible,” explains Dan Tassell, Associate Director at Haworth Tompkins.
“We identified and worked with the best characteristics of the existing site, while also replanning and retooling areas that required improvement. This allowed us to deliver major upgrades to the functionality, legibility, and environmental performance of the building, without losing the worn-in character that complements the creative functions housed within.”
The overall master plan was short-listed for a 2021 International Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The 1970s Mill Street Building is the campus’ largest, providing half the floor space and housing multi-disciplinary workshop facilities. The factory-like structure suffered from ad hoc modifications, leading to poor legibility and underutilized spaces.
However, its raw brick, steel, and concrete shell remained in good condition. Haworth Tompkins’ approach embraces the robust, industrial character of what was there, whilst forming more internal space, maximizing natural light, and upgrading creative facilities.
Flexibility was a focus of the client brief and has been addressed through an infrastructure of pinboard walls, exposed service grids, suspended power modules, data points, and pivoting walls, allowing adaptation to changing needs without wasteful re-planning.
At the heart of the building are new workshop facilities for ceramics, photography, film production, woodwork, metalwork, plaster, printmaking, book arts, and digital hack, all supporting the School’s ethos of Thinking Through Making.
The workshops place state-of-the-art digital production processes alongside traditional analog technologies, nurturing cross-disciplinary experimentation and innovation. Fabric enhancements included replacing patent glazing with high-performance glazing, increased insulation/airtightness, and replacing the 50-year-old heating and ventilation.
Sculptural window surrounds to the south complement red brickwork and provides solar shading, decreasing summertime peak solar gains by 60%. The building sits in a flood plain, so flood resilient materials were used in the ground floor workshops. The refurbishment is on course to reduce campus CO2e emissions by 52% and achieve BREEAM Outstanding.
Expanses of under-utilized flat roofs have been vitalized with green roofs and outdoor amenity spaces, and the riverfront is enlivened with an outdoor gallery and stone workshops. This was a challenging project due to the building being renovated whilst in use, requiring careful control of a tight budget and program.
Care was taken to preserve the high-quality student experience by controlling dust and noise and creating temporary studios and workshops in other areas. The main contract, decant, and temporary works were planned around the academic calendar over a period of 20 months, with major works phased over two summers to ensure continuity.
The project has improved inclusivity by opening up the campus to students, staff, and locals, creating opportunities for creative collaboration, enterprise, and outreach. A continuous public route along the riverfront now stretches from Mill Street to the heart of the campus, providing outdoor workshops and social space. Accessible WCS, showers, and gender-neutral toilets have been incorporated, and lift and stair cores extended, unlocking hard-to-reach spaces previously for use as design studios, enhancing accessibility.
Alumni are supported in setting-up businesses through the Nest incubation program, which includes training, mentoring/networking events, and free access to refurbished workshops and printing facilities.
Glazing introduced at ground level provides a shop window to workshops, allowing the public to engage with processes inside. The refurbishment offers a revitalized creative facility with a calm yet industrious energy, the perfect space to think and make things on the banks of the Hogsmill River.
Project: Kingston School of Art
Architects: Haworth Tompkins
Client: Kingston University
Contractor: Overbury
Photographers: Philip Vile
