London College of Fashion, Stratford

2025 RIBA London Award 

Allies and Morrison for University of the Arts London and London Legacy Development Corporation
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 38,144m²

The new London College of Fashion (LCF) sits between the V&A East Museum and the BBC Music Studios on the East Bank of the Lee Navigation river canal waterfront in Stratford. The area hosted the 2012 Olympics and was billed ‘Olympicopolis’ when the design competition for a new quarter was held by the London Legacy Development Corporation in 2014. East Bank was conceived as a cultural and educational destination in its own right, and a gateway to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

A constituent part of University of the Arts London, LCF is the largest of the buildings on East Bank, providing a single campus for an institution previously served by a disparate collection of six buildings for 5,500 students. The opportunity to consolidate its estate meant combining disciplines ranging from leather working, weaving and jewellery to business into one vast structure. The inherent challenge for Allies and Morrison was to create something with enough specificity to support such a diverse range of specialist courses and enough flexibility to be able to adapt as course requirements and technical needs inevitably develop.

Limited in site area, the 40,000m² of accommodation could only be provided by building tall on the square plot. A rational plan was required to deal with a complex brief and realise a building that would be stimulating but not overwhelming. It succeeds in creating a very legible organisation. The sophisticated cross section is just as instructive in achieving this, clearly zoning the accommodation into a three-storey publicly accessible base, a middle zone the architects describe as ‘typical’ and a ‘communal’ top. The resulting building bills itself as the tallest higher-education building in the UK at 17 storeys, and offers stunning views.

This vertical legibility is reinforced by a material language with three materials rigorously applied throughout: concrete for the structural skeleton; maple for the parts of the building one can touch, including doors and details such as integrated window seats; and dark metal for soffits and services. The proportional use of each one gradually changes on ascent, subtly reinforcing the different uses of each floor. These materials create a warm and calm backdrop to the hum, colour and busyness of creative working to a level of specification not often seen in education buildings.

Rather than insert a single continuous atrium in the centre of the plan, the expression is further enriched by atriums serving only certain floors, while the workshop accommodation wrapping around the heart is sometimes double-height and sometimes inset to create deep balconies. Different types of space will be adapted over time, and floor-to-floor heights are deliberately generous to allow for this.

Designed before calculating embodied carbon was a requirement, the building impressively exceeds the 2023 net-zero carbon targets when applied retrospectively and has exemplary environmental performance, being designed for longevity and resilience.

The college’s website describes fashion as shaping lives and driving economic and social transformation. It is easy to imagine this monumental piece of civic architecture for learning itself being a dynamic contributor to the ongoing economic and social transformation of Stratford.

See the rest of the 2025 RIBA London winners here. And all our RIBA UK Award winners here.

View the full RIBA UK Awards 2025 process.

 

RIBA Regional Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and Velux