The Silberrad Student Centre brings together learning, student services, media and social spaces within a building and lakeside square that create a welcoming front door to the University of Essex.
Designed alongside the extension to the Albert Sloman Library, the building responds closely to the architecture of the 1960s campus and its parkland setting. Resting on a stone terrace at the edge of the lake, three projecting horizontal concrete trays create a strong architectural dialogue with the vertical rhythm of the neighbouring library columns.
Flexible internal spaces accommodate an integrated learning centre, student media centre, student services and the University Council boardroom, bringing academic and social life together at the heart of the campus.
Patel Taylor’s latest addition goes further – with robust interactions of horizontal and vertical in the spirit of the original, and randomised arrangements of windows that also owe something to Capon’s design.(…)There is also a magnificent staircase in black welded steel, (…). It has nothing in particular to do with the campus’s history, but its boldness seems entirely appropriate.’
Rowan Moore, The Observer
