Building Design Partnership - Offices Development - Worcester, Castle Street
Date: 11 Jan 2006
BDP has won the commission to design a new university campus for the City of Worcester against competition from Alsop Design, Architects Design Practice and Broadway Malyan.
The University of Worcester stands in the unique position of being able to embark on a development process which will see it integrated with the heart of its home city. The University's current campus is located at Henwick Grove, an extensive site on the west side of the River Severn, 1.5 miles from Worcester's city centre. The University now intends to establish a city centre presence by developing a second campus on the northern edge of Worcester's historic centre in Castle Street, on the site of the former Worcester Royal Infirmary, a site covering 5.29 acres.
The new Castle Street Campus will complement the existing Henwick Grove Campus by creating a new urban presence in the city. The new campus will house the Business School, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, a third academic faculty, student residences, a conference centre and a hotel housed in the historic hospital buildings.
As well as creating a vibrant new campus for the University, it is the intention to enhance the creative and cultural heart of Worcester. The essence of this design is that it provides a variety of external and internal spaces which are all linked by a strong route through the campus. The intention has not been to create landmark buildings, but rather a series of special urban spaces which vary in scale from the pedestrian entrance at Infirmary Walk to the new University Town Square at the centre. In this way, the whole campus becomes the landmark beacon for the University, rather than any individual building.
The ground floor varies across the site, as it takes up the 8 metre height difference from east to west. This gives a variety of experiences to the users as they approach the site: either through the original façade of the hotel, through the viaduct from the library or from the Henwick Grove Campus to the west. In order for the new campus to be fully accessible to all the users, the routes through the site have been designed to link all the elements at a gradient of less than 1:20. In order to achieve these links, the ground level of the conference centre has been lowered in order to use its green roof as a route across the site.
The new urban edge to the site, which takes advantage of the views over the racecourse to the river, will also form a beacon for the University. All the elements of the new campus will have a 'front door' onto the Town Square, which will create a new destination in Worcester for both the ctizens and the University, nurturing a culture of academic excellence.
BDP's appointment covers: Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture.
Value: £76m. Programme: Start demolition and enabling works mid 2006; start construction of Phase 1 mid 2007.
Model of the new Castle Street campus
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