Following the announcement of the shortlist for the Stirling Prize, I went to visit the new London College of Fashion, one of the group of buildings on the east side of the Olympic Park, part of what is known for obvious reasons as East Bank.
I haven’t regarded the new LCF as the most likable of the buildings of this group – O’Donnell & Tuomey’s Sadler’s Wells East is lower rise and has made more of an effort to conform to a post-industrial aesthetic. But I can see that the Stirling jury will have been looking for buildings with a sense of grand ambition, and the London College of Fashion certainly has that.
From outside, it’s a grid. Only the ground floor and first floor are open to the public, so I wasn’t able to see the top part, nor the view which is no doubt spectacular:-
What is very impressive is the interior, a concrete Piranesi:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I like the fact that the building has had such an impact on Stratford. The students light up the place. They are very visibly doing the important work of finding out who they are – my husband works in the British Council building behind the college and is often delighted by the crazily dressed young people he sees crossing the bridge over to East Bank. And from the occasional vox pop on the college instagram page it is clear that the students are very proud of the new building and all it offers. The college is also good at involving the local community with free to enter exhibitions. As a quilter I was able to attend a day long event about the almost lost art of flat frame quilting. But I have to say that my favourite from the shortlist is the modern alms houses.
It was very quiet, of course, out of term. No students to be seen. Charles