5:10PM Architect and design firm beats off heavy competition to design new London Business School

Sheppard Robson has won the design competition for a £35m-£50m major new building for London Business School.

The firm beat off stiff competition from Foster & Partners, Hopkins Architects, Allies & Morrison, CF Moller, Arup Associates, AHMM and Scott Brownrigg.

Chairman of the school's board of governors, Sir John Ritblat said: “The design harnesses the school's central space, providing us with world-class facilities which match our global status, and creating an enlivening space for staff and students to interact both formally and informally.”

Central to the design is a real focal point for the college campus, linking the existing John Nash designed terrace, Sussex Place, facing Regent's Park and the Plowden building facing Park Road.

The new 6,000 sq m structure, independent of the existing buildings, will occupy the cloistered courtyard with a series of spaces which bridge the two buildings, creating an active forum or an “amphitheatre of business”, as the firm calls it.

Partner and design director at Sheppard Robson, Rod McAllister said: “Screened by the two existing school buildings, we have designed a space which will be experienced from the inside, out. The 'procession' of the spaces will form both a sense of drama and intimacy to the forum, making it a magnet for the exchange of ideas.”

The project is due to be submitted for planning during the first half of 2007 for completion by the end of 2011.

Design details:

Central to the design is a triple height forum, accessed directly from the Park Road entrance. This three-dimensional, tiered space 'steps up' to three storeys of lecture theatres to the north of the site, with a ground level internal courtyard overlooked by offices and seminar rooms to the south. Using bridge technology, three occupied 'bridges', expressed in glass and steel, oversail the central forum creating a dramatic staggered roofline and infusing the internal spaces with a variety of light conditions by day and night.

Source

QS News