Featuring over 270 photos, maps and drawings, many of them specially commissioned, University College London: The Bloomsbury Campus offers the first comprehensive account of the university’s architectural evolution and celebrates the radical London architects and artists that have left their mark on Bloomsbury.
UCL is dominated by the Grade I Listed Wilkins Building (1827) built in the neoclassical style featuring a stunning Greek Revival portico by architect William Wilkins (who is also responsible for the National Gallery) and which was used as the inspiration for the set of the film Gladiator. The Wilkins Building is also home to The Flaxman Gallery, the world’s largest collection of works by the Neo-classical sculptor John Flaxman (1755–1826), originally donated by his family in 1847. At the centre of the gallery stands an 11-foot-tall plaster model of Flaxman’s masterpiece, St. Michael Overcoming Satan, displayed on a structural glass plinth.
UCL is also home to one of London’s most unique buildings Cruciform Building, built in the Victorian Gothic Revival style and designed by Alfred Waterhouse (the National History Museum) in 1896,. Built as a teaching hospital for the university and designed in the shape of a St Andrew’s (diagonal) cross, the layout placed operating theatres at the centre and radiating wings for wards. This configuration was intended to maximize natural sunlight and fresh air circulation while stacking wards over a podium to limit horizontal spread. The original children’s ward in the building also features beautiful ceramic tile artworks by the Art Nouveau artist Margaret E Thompson depicting children’s stories including Sleeping Beauty and Little Bo Peep.
Artists whose work has shaped UCL’s Bloomsbury campus include Turner Prize winner and UCL alumni Rachel Whiteread whose work is featured in the 2019 Student centre designed by Nicholas Hare Architects, with UCL alumnus James Eades serving as the lead architect on the project. Barbara Hepworth designed Theme on Electronics (Orpheus), 1956 for Mullard House which was first the offices of an electronics company but was later bought by UCL.
UCL is also home to the first mural ever painted by acclaimed artist Rex Whistler, Rustic Scene – Villagers Dancing found in the Whistler Room as well as Marmor Homericum, a large, intricate 1860s wall piece by Henri de Triqueti located in the South Cloisters of the Wilkins Building. It depicts Homer reciting the Iliad to the inhabitants of Delos. While the campus also features the brutalist UCL Bloomsbury Theatre designed by the post-war modernist architect Fello Atkinson (James Cubitt & Partners) and opened in 1968 featuring the heavy use of raw, exposed concrete and bold brickwork typical of the mid-century Brutalist movement.
University College London: The Bloomsbury Campus is due for publication on 3rd December as part of the bicentenary celebrations of the University which was founded in 1826.