Fuse led the development of the project brief with Leeds College of Building via a number of stakeholder meetings, this including valuable feedback sessions from the Phase One building. As a result, a strategy for creating spaces capable of delivering the best practice in teaching and education was quickly adopted.

The brief called for two very different types of learning environments – large workshops for the teaching of practical skills and more typical classrooms for academic study. As in the previous Phase One building, large workshop spaces are grouped together, as are the classrooms. As a building college teaching practical skills can be “A messy and noisy business,” so the cleaner/quieter classroom spaces are therefore deliberately positioned to be acoustically separated from the workshops.

Teaching, administrative and social areas are arranged efficiently, with simple to understand circulation spaces. The workshop and classroom zones are linked by a central atrium, which also serves as the main communal space. Throughout both buildings, daylight permeates the relatively deep plans, provided through atria and the extensive use of rooflights over the common areas.

The seamless integration of architecture and interiors was fundamental to our approach. The building design was as much about interior spaces and how they functioned, as it was about the building’s exterior.

Externally the material palette reflects both the industrial heritage of the area and the activities within the buildings. External cladding materials were selected to complement Phase One so as to create a cohesive campus environment. Again a high quality red facing brick was specified to clad the south facing classroom wing of the building with the window reveals celebrated by strong, vibrant colours, giving the façade a playful nature and hinting at the education use within.

Designing a new building for students of the construction industry demanded that a highly sustainable approach was adopted from the outset of the project, and which successfully achieved a BREEAM rating of “Excellent.”