21 September 2010

Raving at BD - Again...

External Elevation
Internal view of Atrium
Images copyright Morley Von Sternberg

Got very heated reading the review of the new Ravensbourne College by Foreign Office Architects in BD yesterday. The review came across as fawning and uncritical in the extreme, with little comment on the quality of the interior spaces other than the atrium - what about where people actually have to work? The interior spaces seem gloomy and unfinished or even cheap (described as "rough and ready" in the review - a polite alternative). This seems to me to be iconic architecture at its worst, with an educational establishment paying a not inconsiderable sum for a building that will now define their institution, and a design that seems to be based solely on an architects whim to investigate tiling tesselation. Shame really, some of their previous schermes, like the La Rioja Technology Transfer Center in Spain, seem much more interesting.

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