Steinweg Arts Building

Studios, workshops and a public hall for a school of fine art, built in board-marked concrete and left almost entirely unlined.

Art schools are renovated more often than any other public building type, so Steinweg is built to be abused. Every surface a student can reach is concrete, plywood or galvanised steel. There are no plasterboard walls anywhere in the building.

The plan is a loose ring of double-height studios around a top-lit hall, which is used for crits, exhibitions, lunch and, twice a year, as a foundry. Services run exposed at high level on a 600 mm grid so that any room can become any other room.

The one indulgence is the light. Studio glazing is held at high level and faces north-east, and the concrete was cast against rough-sawn spruce specifically so that morning sun would rake across it.