Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building, UK

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Facilities, West Yorkshire campus development design, UK architecture images

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

Campus Building Project in North England design by Hawkins\Brown architects, United Kingdom

6 Feb 2018

Architects: Hawkins\Brown

Location: Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building Design

Work has begun on Leeds Beckett University’s £80m Creative Arts building – a new hub for creative education in the city.

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building News

A ground-breaking ceremony for this state-of-the-art facility took place at the end of January. It will be home to the university’s School of Film, Music and Performing Arts, plus the fashion department. It will be packed with specialist facilities including a performance theatre and 220-seat Dolby Atmos movie cinema, as well as specialist studios for fashion, music, film and television.

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

22 May 2017

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building Project

Architects: Hawkins\Brown

Location: Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building by Hawkins\Brown

Leeds Beckett University in conjunction with their development Partner Downing Developments has unveiled designs for a new £75 million Creative Arts Building designed by Hawkins\Brown. Plans submitted for the 14,500sqm scheme will provide an iconic home for academic, creative and cultural activities in the civic heart of Leeds, becoming a stand-out landmark site for the Northern Film School, Music, Performing Arts and Fashion students.

The project aims to attract new audiences and facilitate dialogue between the University, its partners and the wider city.

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

The proposed building forms a major part of the University’s £200m campus development plan, which will be delivered over the next five years.
The Creative Arts Building will be home to 1,850 students and staff, who are currently spread across various separate locations in the city.

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

Assembling the different courses under one roof will create an inspiring artistic and cultural hub, allowing the University to enhance the transferable skills and employability of their students through bespoke specialist facilities and collaborative social learning spaces.
Andrew Fryer, Dean of School of Film, Music & Performing Arts, Leeds Beckett University said: “The Creative Arts Building will reflect the creativity, inspiration and dynamism of the subject areas for which it will be an exciting new home.”

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

Professor Peter Slee, Vice Chancellor, Leeds Beckett University said: “Leeds Beckett University contributes to the city and our region, both academically and economically as a respected employer and vital economic driver for the City.”

Roger Hawkins, Founder Partner of Hawkins\Brown said: “The new Creative Arts Building provides a welcoming creative hub that will encourage new collaborations between courses and enable the university to engage with the wider society to form an innovative cultural dialogue. The aim to create spaces for students, staff and visitors to interact and learn from each other was key to Hawkins\Brown’s design approach on this project.”

Professor Paul Smith Deputy Vice Chancellor said: “The building will become a landmark physical site for Film, Music, Performing Arts and Fashion; in addition it will become a space for new audiences and city dialogue. It will have the ability to inspire learners, engage new audiences and positively impact the lives of students, staff and visitors who share the building. In doing so, it will inspire a new collaborative practice of the arts.”

George Downing, Chairman, Downing Developments said: “We are excited to be working with Leeds Beckett again, building on the success of the partnership that delivered the award-winning Broadcasting Place development.”

The new Creative Arts building, located at the edge of the Civic Quarter of Leeds, occupies a prominent site 10 minutes’ walk from the main cultural and retail amenities of the city centre. It is the final phase of delivery of a Downing masterplan, a 500,000 sq ft development that most recently delivered the Cityside student accommodation scheme.

With Leeds General Infirmary to the West, the site is clearly visible from Millennium Square and is directly opposite the listed Civic Hall to the East. Careful integration of the proposals into this historic setting has been the subject of extensive consultation and liaison with the Planning Department.

The scheme will offer extensive state-of-the-art facilities including a 186 seat theatre, an 84 seat studio theatre, a 216 seat cinema, recording studios, TV studio and film studios, as well as numerous other diverse teaching and breakout spaces.

The entrance foyer is designed as a welcoming, open space, accommodating a 4.5m level change across the site with a feature staircase that connects the publicly accessible areas of the building. An atrium that rises up to the fifth floor is animated by projecting social learning spaces, writing sheds and conversation dens. The lower floors of the building house the theatre, triple height TV studio and a cinema.

The complexity and richness of the building’s brief has generated an approach to the building’s envelop expressive of the activities within, whilst creating a coherency to the whole building form and language. A façade palette of stone, bronze coloured anodized metal cladding and translucent polycarbonate cladding is appropriately civic responding to the listed structures in the immediate context of the Civic Hall.

To Portland Way and Calverley Street the façade acts as a framework communicating the activity and creativity within. In other locations the playful patterning reflects the rich mix of technical uses of the interior.

Subject to planning, works on site will begin end of 2017, with completion estimated to be in 2020.

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building by Hawkins\Brown

Team
User Client: Leeds Beckett University
Development Partner: Downing Development
Architect: Hawkins\Brown
Structural and Civils: Alan Johnston Partnership
M+E Design WSP
Auditoria Design: Charcoalblue
Cost Advice: SUM Ltd
CDM Consultant: Rawlings
Fire Engineering: Omega Fire
Acoustic Engineering: AEC Ltd
BREEAM consultancy: Hoare Lea

About Leeds Beckett University
– Leeds Beckett University was previously Leeds Metropolitan University. − Leeds Beckett University has around 32,000 students on programmes in Leeds and abroad and just over 3,100 staff. − The Vice Chancellor of Leeds Beckett University is Professor Peter Slee and the Chancellor is Sir Bob Murray CBE.
− Leeds Beckett’s four faculties are: Arts, Environment and Technology, Business & Law, Health and Social Sciences, and Carnegie.
− Leeds Beckett University is the only university in the UK to have achieved both the Customer Service Excellence standard, Investors in People Gold and the RoSPA Gold medal across the whole institution.
− The Destination of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE) showed that the proportion of Leeds Beckett 2012/13 graduates in work, further study or both six months after leaving university was 94.6%.

About Hawkins\Brown
Hawkins\Brown is an architecture practice based in London and Manchester.
Founded more than 25 years ago by Partners Russell Brown and Roger Hawkins, the firm works across a range of types and scale, bringing a collaborative approach to its projects.

The practice has completed work on a number of significant arts and culture projects around the UK, including the Henry Moore Foundation’s site at Perry Green in Hertfordshire, The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden, Bucks and the New Art Exchange in Nottingham.

Hawkins\Brown is one of the UK’s leading architects in the higher education sector and is currently working on a number of academic buildings throughout the country, including the Beecroft Theoretical and Experimental Physics Building for the University of Oxford.

Hawkins\Brown is currently working on a major project to transform London’s 2012 Olympic broadcast and media centre into a new digital quarter in east London, as well as three new central London Crossrail stations. In 2016 the practice completed the Bloomsbury headquarters of the UCL Bartlett, one of the world’s most prestigious schools of architecture. In 2013 Hawkins\Brown was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize for its work on the regeneration of Park Hill in Sheffield.

About Downing Development
For over three decades, Downing has steadily built its education portfolio creating inspirational student facilities and accommodation in some of the leading university cities in the country. With over £1bn of developments successfully completed, Downing is now significantly expanding its presence across the UK and working in partnership with leading educational establishments to deliver in excess of £700m new landmark schemes in the most prestigious student cities.

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building

Leeds Beckett University Creative Arts Building images / information received 220517

Hawkins\Brown Architects, London, UK

Address: Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK
Phone: +44 113 812 0000

Website: Leeds Beckett University

Location: Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS1 3HE, West Yorkshire, England, UK

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