I recently I hopped on the train up to a bracing York to visit the York St. John’s University city campus for a tour of the new Creative Centre building. The tour was organised by the University Design Forum who provide the opportunity for professionals from across the industry to visit and experience exemplar buildings across the higher education sector. These provide a great opportunity to share best practice and experience with delegates from across the design team specialisms. It was great to not be in an echo chamber of architects only talking about material choices and spatial volumes but also hearing questions coming up about contract choices and cost models.

Designed by Tate + Co, the building pulls together the university’s creative courses under one roof and provides industry standard specialist facilities for the students to learn in, including an auditorium with stage, television studios and editing suites, music rehearsal and recording rooms, and a film screening room.

These are splayed from a generous central entrance atrium, that ascends the height of the building. The first flight of stairs incorporates amphitheatre style seating and offers niches to inhabit within the curtain walling. An interesting lesson learnt here being that students only started utilising these offerings after the nudge of cushions were offered, firstly assuming the steep steps to be sculptural stairs rather than places to rest. An architectural quirk to consider for any designer moving forward as to how to give building users the excuse to take them up on their design. Luckily, when I visited, the students were well and truly in the practise of studying and gathering in these set down seats.

The building design hinged on two key ideas; one of maximising the view out to the York Minster that the site offered from the first floor, and a second of maximum flexibility for endless reorganisation. The latter principle came from a reading of Building 20 at MIT (demolished in 1998), dubbed as having the most Nobel prizes per sqm (a claim potentially more folklore than truth – see the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm). This precedent building was held up as being successful due to its inherent flexibility. The building had a 13m wide structural grid and was regularly reorganised to provide the correct spaces as and when requirements changed, giving it the opportunity to make breakthroughs in quantum mechanics, the development of the laser, and molecular biology, amongst others. I wonder if its ‘temporary structure’ status also played into its endless reorganisation. The building study manifested itself in the Creative Commons through the rear spine of the building being of an equal 13m structural grid and an insistence on the part of the architects for there to be no columns within this zone, to allow future flexibility to the space.

In their presentation of the design process, Tate + Co walked us through from design competition entry to delivered project. The initial kernel in their design competition was to have the auditorium stage back onto a framed view of the York Minster. A move that tickled me as being particularly Schinkel-esque, riffing on his scenery for the Schauspielhaus Berlin in which he created a backdrop of the theatre itself as its opening night staging.

During their design process, the auditorium moved around in the plan and this ambition was no longer achievable. However, the desire to keep this vantage to the city’s icon was kept and framed views of the minster were incorporated into the main atrium. I think this rational approach to the design process shows brilliantly how a building's design shouldn’t be held hostage to a single idea and yet you should not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The last key design move came when Tate + Co walked us around the building. Their development of the form and external appearance came under the term they coined as ‘super texture’. Whilst not fully defined during our visit, it was quite clear they were referring to the expression of large-scale profiles and surface shape on the building facades. From the rippling concave and convex forms of the black timber on the front elevation and the spiking beaks on the rear.

It is commendable that they have managed to create a building for a large institution that employs so much timber internally and externally, and as both a finish and structure. This material choice humanises the building as you approach and gives the entrance and atrium a warmth; allowing the volume to avoid feeling clinical or institutional.

The material palette has a soft seriousness to it that creates a calming and gentle interior. Clearly one that is both a joy to arrive at and sit within. The soft acoustics provided by the wall finishes and the natural light falling in from various angles throughout the building mean that even on a grey autumnal day, the Creative Centre is both cosy and elevating. The joy of the section of this space provides playful movement and dynamism to the space and the Grafton-esque staircase through the central void cranks the dial from pedestrian pleasantry to spatial curiosity.

The Creative Centre sits in the heart of a campus of an institution that proudly centres its 180-year-old history. It boldly speaks of the modern and the fun, expertly side-stepping any proclivity that some may have to be completely deferent to the nearby historic buildings. It avoids the pitfalls of aping the nearby quad buildings in some ‘modern-idiom’ and is all the more glorious because of it. As such, the Creative Commons sits on its own terms and showcases a university that is proudly building on its history by fostering a culture of openness and creativity. As before, whereby the historic buildings hark back to their contemporaneous approach to higher education, this new building represents the current culture of the institute. Working contextually in spirit and not aesthetic gets my vote any day, a building with a point of view is far better than a building with only a rear view.