Northumbria University Architecture Building

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Throughout Stage 2 and 3, Page\Park engaged with Architecture and Built Environment staff to understand the faculty’s needs and aspiration for their new ABE department home.

These sessions gave us the opportunity to discuss and establish the key principles for the project to determine the best fit for the department within the current project constraints.

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The existing building contributes significantly to the townscape character of Northumberland Road sitting within a cluster of Victorian buildings and acting as a gateway to the Northumbria University campus.

Whereas the east side of the block and internal courtyard have a somewhat haphazard composition and utilitarian character. The incorporation of a new extension for the architecture and built environment department offers the opportunity to restore the setting to a more civic character. The design proposals seek to frame key elements of the existing building and positively contribute to a re-ordered setting to the lanes that lead from Northumberland Road and College Street.

The Sutherland Building faces onto Northumberland Road, extending back in a series of elongated wings towards the access lane off College Street. Linking these legs of building is a high red brick wall that forms the boundary to the site.

The proposed ABE studio leg echoes this character and sits on a new interpretation of that boundary wall. To the east of this new leg, an internal circulation spine links from Northumberland Road through to a courtyard facing the lane.

The main form of the extension is kept to two-storeys to defer to the original building and allow the existing north and west wings to retain their dominant role in the composition.

In its new location the consolidated ABE department holds a prominent position on the campus, effectively the gateway to the University from the city centre.

The Built Environment areas are concentrated in the grand rooms on the ground floor in the north and west wings with the student hub exploiting the corner bay to become the shop window for the department.

The new Architecture studio setting is within the rawer and more ‘industrial’ courtyard. We see this setting as a balancing contrast to the sophistication of the civic architecture of the frontage building. It is the incubator of new ideas, the workshop of creativity, from which the urbane world outside is studied, reworked and re-imagined.

The new building is seen as a contemporary blend of the materiality of the original buildings and current organisational need. It has a number of components in its expressed external and internal brick pier and chimney character:

• To the west an articulated brick wall with large window openings.
• To the south lane a stepped enfilade of brick piers and garden wall elements with glazing and railings between, giving shading to the internal spaces and emphasising the vertical quality of the original architecture in the wall detailing, tower and chimney articulation.
• To the internal lane a brick chimney and pier wall carrying the roof glazing connecting the different studios.