Sackler Building

The Sackler Building is the first phase of the RCA’s plan for a major new campus in Battersea. The campus will eventually house the Schools of Fine Art and Applied Art, and also provide accommodation for start-up units for new businesses in the fields of art and design as well as a gallery and 220-seat lecture theatre.

The Sackler Building was conceived as a conversion; the old building - a single story factory - has been transformed into a series of new day lit spaces under a new roof form, by inserting a new independent steel structure within the existing brick enclosure.

This has significantly increased the height of the building, providing several double height, 7m-high studios along with a mezzanine level, which houses a number of smaller top-lit, 3.5m high studios, whilst retaining a predominantly open plan environment.

The organisation of the studios off a generous corridor, is a traditional art school plan arrangement and echoes the typology of both the Royal Academy and V&A where this device provides a social space and temporary exhibition venue, a space that everyone moves through past the work of other students, past and present.