Reference visit to the University of Plymouth

20 March 2025

Sustainable Transformations of Post-War Buildings as part of a Campus Strategy at the University of Plymouth

Introduction
The 20th century did few favours for Plymouth. The city centre was devastated by bombing in the Second World War and the post-war rebuilding had a strong focus on transport with, as in many post-war rebuilding projects, major roads cutting through what is now the centre of the city. (Ref 1) It was at one time proposed to demolish the Barbican area due to the poor-quality of the housing, but fortunately, after local and national protests, this historic area was saved and major investment made to improve the quality of the housing and regenerate the area. The city today has a plan to 2034 for growth and strengthening the focus of the city and it is good to see investments in, for example, the new library, art and archive centre, The Box – completed during the pandemic and highly acclaimed as a success, attracting high visitor numbers, the new vision for Armada Way which is currently on site, and refurbishment of the historic Guildhall (Ref 2). Perhaps indicative of the challenges the City faces with its post-war architecture is the debate about the future of the 1970’s Civic Centre and its heritage merit and urban significance. The University of Plymouth, then a polytechnic based in the city centre, constructed several new buildings in this post-war era. It gained university status in 1992 and has recently undertaken an estate investment strategy on its own campus and in a post-war office block above Plymouth mainline railway station, a short walk away.

Campus Strategy
Investments by the university included the flagship Roland Levinsky Building designed by Henning Larsen with Building Design Partnership and completed in 2007, a flagship building which has come to represent both the university and the city, the Marine Building, reinforcing Plymouth’s international research in marine sciences. designed by Burwell Architects and completed in 2012 and, at a much smaller scale, the CobBauge building, designed by Hudson Architects, a living research project investigating sustainable and commercial development of this innovative earthen construction material.  This project is an embodiment of the university’s values and treating the main campus as a living laboratory. The recent campus strategy (Ref 3) developed by Stride Treglown focused on retention and transformation of existing buildings, rather than demolition and rebuild, in a sustainable way that maximises the value of embodied carbon from existing structures and also, project by project, improves the public realm around the campus, previously harsh, car-focused and uninviting. In this, the projects contribute to the university’s ambition for decarbonisation of the campus. The well-attended Reference Visit included three important projects;

• The Babbage Building which has been stripped back to its original structural frame and transformed into a new facility for large-scale engineering, design and fabrication by the architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios who were appointed following a RIBA design competition and the contractor BAM Construction. The project incorporated an extension, specialist laboratories and workshops and a roof terrace, and was completed in December 2023.

• The Fitzroy Building, a Brutalist building repurposed as the new home for the Business School in December 2024 by the architect KTA and the main contractor Kier. Challenges included the creation of a new central staircase and lifts, discovering an old air-raid shelter while extending the building, and over-cladding the existing building.

• InterCity Place, refurbished in 2023, which in many ways appears the most challenging of the projects - a landmark 10-storey office building, a short walk from the main campus, and similar to office towers of this date found in towns and cities across the county, with the complication that it is immediately adjacent to Plymouth railway station with the lowest floor being part of the operational station. Empty and derelict, it was acquired by the University, completely stripped back to the structure and refurbished as 21st century teaching and research spaces for nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions by the architects Stride Treglown and the main contractor Kier. Operational challenges included designing construction scaffolding for installation above an operational station, designing out the potential impact of noise from the station on university’s activities and managing issues such as fire alarms in the building and asbestos removal impacting on the station. The project included a design for the cladding, won by MICA Architects after a design competition, which has provided articulated geometrical facades which add positively to the impact of the building.

Lessons for the designers of today?
The three projects show, in different ways, how tired post-war buildings can be transformed in a sustainable way to create 21st century academic environments, while optimising that the use of embodied carbon, retaining, amending and expanding the original structure to design for new specialist uses, one of the main criteria perhaps being the floor to floor heights in the original building – a lesson for designers of new buildings today. Key has been working with the character of the different buildings, including opportunities for extension, new lift and staircase zones and managing inherited issues such asbestos, while also connecting the exterior design and landscaping into the overall campus. Key has been the inclusion of colour and articulation into new cladding to move away from the harsh brutal architecture of the past.

A new heart for the campus
A future project on campus is the creation of a new landscaped space at the heart of the campus, a welcome addition to what is still a relatively hard urban campus. This has great potential to be a real asset for the university, taking the example of other institutions such as King’s College London with the new Aldwych landscaping project which provide spaces for students and staff, that support wellbeing, facilitate street food and public art and also allow the public to engage with the university, and in this case could be part of a sequence of spaces that links to Armada Way

Speakers 
Trevor Wills, Director of Estates & Facilities, University of Plymouth
Colin Cobb, FCBS, Lead project architect for the Babbage Building
Ajay Sharma, KTA, lead architect for the Fitzroy Building
Alistair Wilson, Stride Treglown, Lead project architect, ICP

The University Design Forum extends its thanks to the University of Plymouth for organising and sponsoring the event, to all the speakers and all those who supported the visit, and to the delegates for an excellent visit and discussion.

Written by Ian Caldwell and images credited to Simon Fraser.