Education Feature: Central Saint Martins - College’s home is fit for a king
Published: 29 September, 2011
FOR more than 150 years, Central Saint Martins (CSM) has pioneered radical innovations in art, design and performance.
Its influence feeds into the arts education system, culture, industry and mainstream society.
This is felt across the world, contributing to the high international value placed on British culture and creativity.
Generations of internationally renowned artists, designers and performers began their creative journeys there.
Their work has defined and transformed our times.
The college is influenced by a fast-moving world.
It has been clear to them that changes to creative practices and the needs of their students and staff were outstripping their resources and dated facilities.
This summer the college moved to a new home at King’s Cross.
The move to this extraordinary state-of the-art space will carry forward the best of CSM’s history into a new era of arts education.
The design of the new campus has presented them with a unique opportunity to re-imagine how they educate the art, design and performance students of the future.
They aim to create the highest quality learning environment – a place connected to the best and most advanced developments in contemporary culture and industry – a place where students and staff will continue to provoke, challenge, inspire and take risks.
The £200million newly built complex is conceived around a set of buildings with their own unique history. Lewis Cubitt’s 1851 Grade II-listed Granary Building and Transit Sheds were a goods interchange at the height of the Victorian boom, enabling goods to be transferred between rail, road and canal.
These classical buildings have been lovingly restored and adapted to become a modern college for all the arts.
Designed by internationally renowned architects Stanton Williams, the new site includes two modern concrete and glass studio buildings that complement the heritage brickwork of the original structure.
Project Manager Mathew Barrett said: “The new building has been designed to reflect our core value of “learning though making”.
“We’ve retained traditional crafts alongside our new technologies, as these are an important part of who and what we are.”
Within the complex, besides workshops, studios and project spaces there is also a purpose-built art gallery, public display spaces, a very large library, a lecture theatre with 400 capacity, rehearsal rooms and dance studios, a TV studio, editing suites, a large canteen and a Students’ Union café, and a bar/event space.
To find out more visit www.csm.arts.ac.uk/kings-cross-move
Contact details
Central Saint Martins
Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA
Tel: 020 7514 7023
Fax: 020 7514 7254