The past few months have been terrible for concrete’s reputation but UCL’s new Marshgate building – a veritable palace of the stuff – certainly looks as though it has been built to last.
Looming over the River Lea and competing for space in the rapidly changing Olympic Park skyline with Sir Anish Kapoor’s spiralling ArcelorMittal Orbit, the building is one of two that comprises the new UCL East campus, billed as the biggest expansion in the university’s near 200-year history.
The antithesis of UCL’s constricted, historic base in Bloomsbury, Marshgate has a big, cavernous atrium, overlooked by eight floors and a giant, glowing model of Planet Earth that hangs from a huge open ceiling.
Big, expensive capital projects are often criticised in higher education but, done well, they can be an opportunity to change what a university does and UCL’s ambitions for the new campus match its immense stature.
