'There is something absurd about the Embassy extension
for London's Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD).
False eyelashes fall out of half-open drawers. Mesdames
Pompadours bump into you in the corridors. Notice-boards
are covered with weird phrases such as 'Broken heart'.
'Into the woods' or 'Blithe spirit' that appear to be
the graffiti of schizophrenics. The words are, in fact,
the titles of plays.
'And yet Cullum & Nightingale has created a building
among all this surrealism, a contrast if ever there was
one. For surely, architecture is the most rational of
activities in which the pursuit of order comes into direct
conflict with the uncertainties and untidiness of humanity?
Or, perhaps, good architecture is a balance between the
two, providing a backbone against which the activities
of life can be played. Cullum & Nightingale would
seem suitable for this compromise.
'Colin Davies describes its architecture as 'modern,
but not quite modernist; it is complex and allusive but
too restrained to be described as post-modernist; it
expresses the structure and construction clearly and
unambiguously, but it certainly isn't hi-tec [sic]. It
has classical poise and proportion but does not use any
of the conventions of classical ornament; it makes use
of natural materials and traditional forms but it isn't
romantic or folksy.' 1
'The result of such cultural heterogeneity has
been a varied workload, not just of building type but
also in the quality of the architecture. Some of the
buildings have directly influenced parts of the Embassy
extension while other seem scarcely related. The Nightingale
house in Hampstead (1988), is rendered like the Embassy
extension. The architects resolve problems of daylight
by using windows that are levered out like a door left
ajar. Another project, a house extension in London's
Bayswater (1990) relates to the Embassy extension for
the interior where the space is a double-height volume.
'Both buildings are responses to awkward sites
and briefs, but other examples are somewhat more extravagant.
The practice's competition-winning High Commission in
Nairobi (1989) relies on a historicist (even beaux arts
) approach in its planning and articulation of elevations.
'The Embassy extension is closer in thinking and
appearance to the robustness of the first two buildings
rather than the squishiness of the last one. It could
not possibly be some grand object within a perfect landscape,
repeating, for example, the theoretical approach of Nairobi.
Cullum & Nightingale was forced to be far more pragmatic.
The CSSD campus is scattered across an awkward arrowhead-shaped
site between the rich, white villas of Belsize Park and
the noisy vulgarities that are the Finchley Road and
Swiss Cottage.
'The CSSD reflects this diaspora with a double-fronted
Victorian building, the Embassy theatre, closest to the
villas while the campus disintegrates into the Finchley
Road with a muddle of Portacabin-like shacks. Cullum & Nightingale's
role is to bring sense to this disorder ( see
below )
with a masterplan that sorts out the existing buildings.
A series of new buildings reintroduces urban qualities
to the nearby roads while unifying the campus.
'The Embassy extension is the first in that series.
At a glance it presents a strange starting point, for
it sits in the middle of the site, the Embassy theatre
on one side and the huts all around. The building footprint
reflects the restrictions of the site. More interestingly,
the shape and façades of the building accommodate
future buildings proposed in the masterplan. The Embassy
extension, therefore, is something like three-dimensional
architectural archaeology whereby each wall of any building
tells a story of the past and future.
'The new building is almost rhomboid in shape,
only one side at present a party wall. The other 'party
wall' is coarse breeze blocks, left exposed until a later
phase is built. The rear is clad in bricks, intended
as just one side of a future courtyard. The front is
the most complete, rendered white like the Nightingale
house. More significant is the reappearance of a levered
façade: each floor of the four-storey building
has some sort of balcony or terrace, each of which is
differently oriented and variously shaped to exploit
maximum enjoyment of the outdoors. The roof caps the
lot, its bottom edge set at a severe angle running away
from the façade until the building's elevation
is an expression of a series of divergent planes.
'Such mechanisms make for powerful statements.
But the devices also enrich the interior which is a sensible
arrangement of new facilities. There is nothing of the
indulgence common to some of Cullum & Nightingale's
work, (the exception being the temporary classroom (1991)
for North Westminster Community College. Notice the similarity
to the fourth-floor design studio). Floors are of simple
screed, block walls are left exposed veined with cabling,
and blank doors are of wood veneer. But, gosh, it works.
Students, dressed in their Roman togas, dash on to balconies
to stretch their tendons. Set designers drag their models
on to terraces to spray-mount miniature Figaros.
'The rationalisation of space is just the background
to the far richer scenery of dirt, dust and muddle. Architecture
works best on that level where it provides the proscenium
arch through which the performance of life can be observed.'
John Welsh.
The Embassy extension is only the start: The greater
scheme of things is a five-phase masterplan for the Central
School of Speech and Drama, London
'Market thinking has well and truly hit further
education. The Higher Education Funding Council for England
now demands that all further education bodies produce
' accommodation strategies' - mission statements for
the coming 20 years - on which all their funding is judged.
This chill, new climate as aroused ire in many quarters.
But the Central School of Speech and Drama seems to have
benefited from it, seizing the opportunity to come up
with a major development programme.
'Cullum & Nightingale's Embassy theatre extension
is the second phase of a five-phase masterplan devised
by the architects. Eventually, the whole of the school's
triangular site will be redeveloped. The temporary buildings
that litter the site will be replaced by new, purpose-designed
studios, student facilities, a speech therapy unit and
leisure and retail outlets. Only the school's main building
and Embassy theatre will be retained.
'The masterplan is a pragmatic solution, carefully
balanced between the school's aspiration for growth and
the realities of funding. Each phase of the plan can
be developed separately if and when the funding comes
on line.
'The evidence is that it is working. Funding for
phase 1 of the plan - a studio workshop for the theatre
design course was granted, as was £1 million for
phase 2(a), support facilities built on to the back of
the studio workshop with a drama studio above. A further £1
million was granted for phase 2(b). This phase - the
Embassy extension, which has just been completed - adds
a further two floors of studios, lecture rooms and tutorial
spaces to the back of the studio workshop and finishes
off the roof of the drama studio.
'Phase 3 of the masterplan starts relating the
school to neighbouring buildings. A three-storey building
on Eton Avenue will relate the school to the more domestic-scale
architecture of the houses around. This building will
house a library, media resource base, student facilities
and administration offices. Planning permission has just
been granted for this phase.
'Finally, phases 4 and 5 of the plan will sort
out the confusion of make-shift accommodation on the
College Crescent side of the site - the site's most important
aspect. On the corner of College Crescent and Eton Avenue,
a major new building, housing a public cafe with a cabaret
venue above will also help to build up the strength of
the corner. On College Crescent itself, a six-storey
block with shops on the ground floor and student facilities
above will give the college a prominent frontage in line
with the scale of other buildings on the road. On the
corner with Buckland Crescent, a new speech therapy unit
will help define the corner.
'Such a maior development on the southern fringes
of Hampstead has naturally annoyed local residents who
have complained that the plan is too dense for the site.
The site is a strategic one, linking the leafy residential
neighbourhood around Eton Avenue with the far busier,
noisier Finchley Road. But by building up the site's
College Crescent frontage and reducing the height of
the development on the Eton Avenue side, Cullum and Nightingale's
plan in fact helps to make this transition more comfortable.' Naomi Stungo
1 Colin Davies, 'New Architects', Building, 11 October, 1991.
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