Stirling Prize winners on shortlist for new UCA business school

The pair are joined by Hall Mcknight, Tate Harmer and Dutch stars UNStudio in the RIBA-backed contest to design the 3,728m² project in Surrey.

Known as the Business School for the Creative Industries, the scheme is being billed as ‘the first of its kind in the UK’ and will connect to the campus’s existing business school known as the Market Place.

Each of the five shortlisted teams will now receive £7,500 to participate in the ‘negotiation phase’ of the contest during which a series of a design approach workshop sessions will be held with the UCA before their developed design concepts are submitted in February.

In its brief, the university calls the business school ‘a unique concept that will seek to provide an environment in which the beauty and free expression of art can mix effortlessly with the rational sobriety of the business world.

‘This fusion of the creative industries and business has the goal of becoming the place where the next generation of arts entrepreneurs meet, create and turn ideas into sound business models.’

UCA was founded 10 years ago following the merger of the Kent Institute of Art and Design and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design (SIAD). It has more than 6,000 students across campuses in Epsom, Farnham, Rochester and Canterbury.

The Epsom campus opened in 1973 (then part of SIAD’s predecessor, the Epsom School of Art and Design) and hosts the university’s fashion, graphics, music marketing and business courses.

To make way for the new building, a number of existing further education buildings and studios will be demolished.

The new business school is expected to feature a 250-capacity auditorium, a lecture theatre, IT studios, reprographics department, boardroom, meeting spaces, IT studios, incubator spaces, staff offices, a flexible foyer, and a ‘learning lounge’ with kitchenette.

Judges will include UCA deputy vice-chancellor Alan Cooke; Katherine Boxall, assistant director of UCA Epsom’s business school; and Nigel Craddock, project director at Pascall + Watson who will be acting as RIBA architect adviser to the process.

Shortlist in full

• Hall McKnight
• Haworth Tompkins
• Tate Harmer
• UNStudio
• Wilkinson Eyre Architects