Work rest and play: after years of absence, a new university campus brings access to higher education back to the city of Gloucester

Walking around the University of Gloucestershire's new campus with Peter Clegg, it is immediately apparent that architects Feilden Clegg Bradley passionately believe in, and profoundly understand, the significant contribution that education brings to our lives--not only in terms of architecture and regeneration, as a group of architects who love to build, but far more holistically. Education is undoubtedly in FCBA's blood, and while their extensive 25 year portfolio includes excellent arts, housing, and community projects, the fulfilment of the practice's priorities is perhaps most explicit in their work for education. FCBA design as users, and when designing places where people seek education, they repeatedly draw on collective personal experiences as students, parents, and teachers. So, a practice internationally known for its pioneering innovations in environmental sustainability and energy efficiency, gives more by reflecting on an equally significant commitment to the broader issues of economic and social sustainability.

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For more than 12 years, the UK's higher education sector has offered FCBA scope and opportunity to innovate, becoming a staple and producing significant buildings for Sunderland and Aston Universities, the Open University and London's Imperial College. However, despite such individual successes, richer results seem to have come when the practice has been engaged in long-standing client relationships, such as those with King Alfred's College in Winchester, and here in Gloucestershire; both of which have been nurtured since the early 1990s. By relying on a culture of learning and innovation, universities and colleges have historically acted as laboratories for architectural experimentation, and while commercial realities exist, academic institutions tend to prioritize long-term investment over quick-fix, fast-buck incentives--as has been FCBA's experience in Gloucestershire.

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Under the ambitious stewardship of the University's Vice Chancellor Dame Janet Trotter, the University of Gloucestershire has become one of the West Country's more committed architectural patrons, commissioning FCBA's award-winning intervention within the gothic revival quad of Francis Close Hall Campus in 1994, Edward Cullinan's Art Media and Design facilities at Pitville campus (AR April 1994), and most recently with its new Sport and Exercise Sciences campus in the heart of Gloucester.

On college land formerly occupied by a 1950s training college, the new campus was built to redress the uneven distribution of the county's higher education facilities, which since 1992 had been solely within Cheltenham. In 1996, FCBA were appointed to review the potential of the site, and to co-ordinate a long-term campus strategy.

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As the first stage, building stock was evaluated to see if any of structures from the previous five decades of development could be re-used. But, after considering flexibility of use, options for upgrading (particularly in terms of energy conservation), organizational efficiency, site distribution, and architectural quality, FCBA somewhat reluctantly concluded that demolition was the most feasible option. A decision that may have been regrettable in terms of embodied energy, but which increased opportunities to develop a high density, centralized strategy. This, while offering scope for expansion, would create sufficient critical mass within a modest first phase to give the fledgling campus its own identity and sense of place. So phase one, which was completed for the student intake of October 2002, included a new learning resources and teaching centre, sports science facility, and refectory, which collectively form a north-south armature that acts as the campus' heart and spine. Parallel to this sits another north-south terrace of 180 study rooms, all with private bathrooms, which terminates in a student common room and bar. It forms a communal cluster that, when linked to the facilities building by an east-west landscaped body of water, creates an entrance threshold for the site.

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Organizing buildings on this axis was central to the campus' environmental strategy, avoiding bleak north-facing study bedrooms, enabling both the learning resource centre and the sport sciences building to exploit diffuse north light (reducing dependency on artificial lighting), and optimizing the performance of the EU and DTI funded photovoltaic array recently installed onto the sport sciences building's distinctive tick-section roof. (An installation estimated to meet 50 per cent of the sport sciences building's demand, equivalent to 30 per cent of the precinct's combined load.) With this in place, attention focused on the most complex environmental problem: the internal conditioning of the learning resources centre.

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With the dramatic increase in IT provision in education, there are now many environmental variables to consider when seeking to create stable comfort levels. Learning from experience gained on the Martial Rose Library in Winchester, FCBA again adopted a hollow core displacement ventilation strategy: a system that responds well to the most onerous conditions during winter months, when maximum occupancy levels demand high air change targets without throwing away the free heat benefit that computers and people provide.