University of Kent: The Historic Dockyard Chatham
Reviving Medway’s historic dockyard as university art spaces
- Location
- London & South East
- Client
- Chatham Historic Dockland Trust
- Awards
- RIBA South/South East 2011 (The Smithery)
Purcell converted five principal buildings - The Smithery, The Central Boiler House, The Firestation, The Foundry, and The Engineers Workshop - to provide a fine arts centre with large studios, a student workshop, music studios, and a dance studio after the University of Kent's School of Music and Fine Art requested five new lettable arts spaces within the existing dockyard buildings.
The development contained a variety of listed buildings and scheduled ancient monuments. To ensure their preservation, Purcell liaised closely with English Heritage and Medway Council to meet all historic building requirements, completing five separate change of use and four scheduled monument applications. English Heritage were supportive of the work to bring the dockyard back to life.
The project provided the University of Kent with a flexible series of spaces that can each be used to maximum advantage. To ensure all future use is as unhindered as possible, new wall linings and floors were installed throughout and the music studios were set up as self-contained units to maximise acoustic and equipment needs whilst observing the building’s historic fabric restrictions.
Studio: Canterbury
