​City of Glasgow College - City Campus

by Reiach And Hall Architects and Michael Laird Architects

Client City of Glasgow College
Awards RIBA Award for Scotland 2017 and RIBA National Award 2017

The merger of Glasgow’s central, metropolitan and nautical colleges created a super college bringing together facilities and teaching previously housed in 11 separate buildings across the city within two new central campuses. City Campus, more than 60,000m2 in size, is the second of these large new buildings. It brings together six major faculties in 300 high-tech classrooms, multi-purpose lecture theatres and specialist teaching facilities.

While the initial impression of this building is as something of immense scale which also signals its presence as an important place of learning, its internal spaces are designed to encourage both the formal teaching processes which it contains and informal, more chance encounters. The materials palette and form of the building are deliberately restrained to generate something of skill, clarity and elegance, on the grandest scale.

There is an astonishing scale and complexity to the brief for this project and considerable architectural skill is demonstrated in its realisation; not just in resolving the brief, but in the contribution to the city – in massing, composition and the generosity of the public route through the grand stepped atrium space. This architectural skill extends beyond the cityscape through to the detailed care taken in the organisation of student spaces, encouraging social interaction across disciplines, to the considered approach to materials and detailing.

Contractor Sir Robert McAlpine
Structural Engineer Arup
Landscape Architectrankinfraser landscape architecture
Quality Surveyor Sir Robert McAlpine / Sweet Group
M&E Engineer FES with Hulley and Kirkwood
Acoustics ARUP Acoustics
Fire Engineer Jeremy Gardner Associates
Interiors Graven Signage: Studio LR