The original commission was part of an enabling idea initiated in 1998 by Kensington & Chelsea College (KCC) which wished to move from the Sloane building on Hortensia Road, originally an early London County Council Board School that had become uneconomic to maintain but which had generous playground on either side. It was proposed that the playground to the north, facing Fulham Road, would be developed for market housing and the sale of the land would generate revenue to pay for the construction of a new college on the playground to the south. After this had been achieved, the Sloane building would be converted into apartments.
When the scheme was finally approved in 2005 the chairman of the planning committee chose to describe it as “a classic enabling project”. The north side of Fulham Road and the east side of Hortensia Road are characterised by terraced frontages, with the opposite sides made up of freestanding, independent and semi-institutional buildings. The site for the apartments, on the corner of Fulham Road and Hortensia Road, faced the lodge and entrance gates of Brompton Cemetery. To the west was a Romanesque church and octagonal baptistery. Brick was their common material.
The college adopts a frontal arrangement of cubic forms whereas the apartment block, as a corner building enlists the geometry of the circle. The college pays a distant tribute to the additive forms of cubist sculpture whereas the apartments form a finite and tiered series of terraces reminiscent of an ocean-going liner or a wedding cake – a typical London collage.
The college is composed of four distinct elements: a portico, a vaulted hall, a block of classrooms and an embedded tower, together forming a composite whole, all clad in plain brickwork. The large number of classroom windows are positioned perpendicular to the street (facing north), avoiding repetition as an image of the institution. From the street, a long horizontal window represents the cafe and the social life of the college, a tall vertical window expresses circulation, and a grid of small windows in the tower represents the place of individual study.
All the communal activities are on the ground floor. As opposed to the free plan where a continuous space is subdivided by screen denoting separate functions, here a “raumplan” is proposed, whereby a distinct character is introduced to the different rooms, and their adjacency gives an energy and density of use to the plan.
The entrance hall is trapezoidal, with direct access to the other public rooms – the cafe, the library, and the hall. Here a continuous information counter, finished in oak, forms one side of the space and gives direction to the lifts and the accommodation stair opposite. A line of circular concrete columns, positioned in the centre of the space, leads to the library beyond. The floor is finished in Pietra Serena stone.
A servery acts as a transitional space between the entrance hall and the vaulted double-height cafe, crowned by a linear roof light, which forms the social heart of the college. A long horizontal window and stainless steel counter provide a place from which to observe the activity of the street (Edward Hopper’s paintings were a conscious reference). On the other side of the room three doors lead directly to the hall and beyond to the future college garden. The sequence of cafe, hall and garden with views to the parkland represents the extended social territory of the college.
The hall is square in plan and is accessed either directly from the lift lobby or more formally from the cafe, serving as its foyer. The plan is a nine-square grid, represented by its ceiling of concrete downstand beams.
The library is a square reading room lined with timber bookcase to door height. A series of smaller study and interview rooms are directly accessible from the space. The college garden, accessible from the hall and library, is an outside “room”. The sections demonstrate an elementary hierarchy between the communal and public activities on the ground floor and the teaching floors above.
The accommodation stair provides a device to form sequential and spatial connections between the ground and the lower three floors. The stair establishes a diagonal path, illuminated by light canons at each half landing. Apart from acting as a referential space, giving a sense of orientation to the many occupants (a diagonal atrium), it encourages informal contact between students and departments, and helps avoid corridors. There are 72 steps and 7 landings that make connections between the floors.
Roof lighting is exploited in a variety of ways, from the even working light of the nine-square grid of northlights over the sixth floor art studio, to the light canons above the accommodation stair, where daylight unexpectedly ventures deep into the plan. Elsewhere, at the centre of the plan is an escape stair which, because of its location, is used as a convenient connection between floors. Daylight is introduced, transforming the stair into a six-storey light shaft. Daylight is also introduced through a slot at the apex of the vaulted roof to the cafe, making artificial lighting mostly unnecessary during the day.
Colour is employed to enliven an otherwise monochromatic series of spaces and give identity to the various levels. The walls to the principal circulation areas and lift lobbies are painted in strong primaries in contrast to the neutral whites and greys requested for the classrooms.
Milliner House is six storeys high and 25 metres deep in plan with a very low net-to-gross area ratio. Externally the building combines two elevational ideas – firstly, a rectangular block with large simple openings, reminiscent of artists’ studios. Secondly, a stepped section in combination with a semi-circular plan acting as a hinge between the two streets. This forms a series of concentric terraces which produces a tiered appearance when seen from Fulham Road.
The flats have large full-height sliding windows which locally transform a portions of the living room, giving a sense of the outside. The circumference is a remarkable 40 metres, shared between two flats on the third floor. The architects were mindful of the tradition of 1930s Beaux Arts parties in New York, where hats were worn in the style of buildings. Perhaps the test of a building should be whether it makes a good hat.
The Chelsea Academy has now been completed on an alternative site nearby on Lots Road. We no have four buildings of varying pedigree representing the development of the street over the last 100 years.