University bosses today unveiled their plans for a controversial new ‘super campus’ that involves closing two satellite campuses including the famous Sir John Cass arts college in east London.
Architects have been appointed by London Metropolitan University to plan out the £125 million project in the main campus at Holloway, despite a campaign against the closures.
The project means Whitechapel’s Cass Arts complex would close—in the face of opposition from unions, students, lecturers and even the Mayor of Tower Hamlets.
The award-winning Design Engine architects practice has been commissioned to develop a Masterplan for the super campus to accommodate all the university’s curriculum at Holloway Road.
This brings all faculties together including its prestigious Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture & Design in Whitechapel High Street and the Guildhall Faculty of Business & Law currently at Moorgate.
“We want to make London Met a community university,” Vice Chancellor John Raftery said today. “Universities can play a positive role in local communities if they open up, share and collaborate with the people who live alongside them.
“A key factor in the brief for the architects was to show us how they can create a university that is open to the community.”
London Met now plans community events alongside internal consultations.
But they are still facing continued opposition from unions and students at the Cass faculty, whose Dean resigned before the New Year in protest at the plans. Other lecturers have threatened to follow en mass. The students also occupied the building for nine days in protest.
Tower Hamlets Mayor John Biggs held top level talks with the vice chancellor in October in an attempt to stop St John Cass arts campus being shut—which faces the same fate as the famous Women’s Library in Whitechapel run by London Met that was shut down in 2013.
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