Project: A new world class learning centre on the site of the South London and Maudsley campus.
Value: £7,000,000
Client: SLaM Charitable Fund
Status: Planning

Duggan Morris Architects has submitted a planning application for a New Learning Centre, on the Maudsley Hospital Campus of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, on Denmark Hill. The client, SLaM NHS Trust Charitable Funds, is a charitable foundation which invests in projects to support world class mental health and well being, support, training and development. The project has been informed and developed through an 18 month immersion process involving research and building visits as well as extensive consultation with SLaM user groups, Kings College Hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry and community groups, with DMA commissioned to develop the client’s brief which was summarized through a series of ‘Vision Statements’.

The new 1,550sqm building will house teaching and learning facilities, cafe, exhibition and ancillary spaces. The central focus of this unique project, coined ‘Project Learning Potential’, is to create a totally immersive learning environment through networking, social media and Wi-Fi technologies such that each individual user can tune the learning process to his/her needs to obtain the maximum results.

The project is planned as flexible, sub-dividable spaces positioned around a central void, navigated by a grand ‘open’ staircase. In cross-section, these floor plates ‘stagger’ across this void by half a storey, thus the grouping of learning spaces appears to extend from the half landing of the open stair; the aim being to create a stronger visual link between floors enhancing the ethos of an immersive learning environment.

This central void also controls the environmental performance of the building, which is uniquely passive, by introducing abundant natural light from a glazed roof into the heart of the plan, feeding each floor plate. In turn automated glazed vents throughout the building envelope introduce cooling air as required at each level throughout day and night, feeding the central stack of the void.

Internally, the building frame, of fair faced concrete, is exposed throughout. The floor slab soffits are detailed as ribbed units, increasing the available surface area and thermal mass. Acoustic surfaces and lighting is integrated within the recesses of these ribs ensuring an integrated appearance.

The building exterior has been developed out of a response to the overtly Georgian context of Camberwell’s ‘Grove Lane’ and the Camberwell Grove Conservation Area. Thus the building has a simple rectilinear form, with elevations composed to compliment the Georgian principles of proportion, scale, hierarchy and materiality. As such, a 1200mm vertical grid, of precast concrete fins, articulates the contrasting materials of brick and glass, whilst floor slabs are expressed in the same material ensuring the stagger of the floor plates is abundantly clear to even the casual passer-by.

Terraces at ground, inset balconies above, and a large roof terrace further articulate the simplicity of the building, whilst creating positive connections between internal spaces and the abundant landscape which sits in and around the project. At ground level, the landscape is envisaged as a series of connected rooms, mirroring the internal configurations thus ensuring that learning activities can spill out in a controlled manner. At the entrance this landscape will extend and connect into a planned avenue, proposed by Emoli Petroschka Architects as part of a Framework for a more detailed Masterplan for the site, intended to open the SLaM campus up to the local and outlying community. A cafe at the ground floor of the New Learning Centre is thus intended as a marker along this planned route.

A key vision for the new building is to destigmatise preconceptions of mental health and well being, by making it more accessible to the wider community,  sharing with the campus a vision which includes doctors, nurses, teachers, service users and carers in promoting an integrated learning environment;  ‘learning for anyone, anywhere, any time’.