The Dyson Building, London

This factory-like building is the new home for print-making and photography at the Royal College of Art in London. Haworth Tompkins were appointed by the RCA to develop a new 8000m2 campus in Battersea to house workshops and studios plus back up facilities for staff and students.

The building is conceived as a creative ‘factory’ both in the industrial sense (as a place of industry), and through the reference to Andy Warhol’s Factory as a place of art production. Raw concrete walls and surfaces recur throughout the building, which the architects hope will become gradually marked with traces of paint, glue, and other materials used by students.

An open, central ‘machine hall’ forms the heart of the building, designed to house large printing machines, an exhibition room lines the building’s street-facing facade and the 220-seat lecture hall which is located on the first floor.

The building's aesthetic derives from the way it has been made, with polished precast concrete cladding panels and an in-situ concrete structure – exposed throughout and used expressively to form a series of dramatic interlocking spaces. The RCA Dyson Building forms the centrepiece of the RCA’s new Battersea Campus.