Royal College of Music - The More Music Project
Royal College of Music - The More Music Project
This £24m scheme included engineering work for part-demolition and refurbishment, alteration and new-build (including basement works) at this prestigious Grade II listed building.
The Royal College of Music, one of the world’s leading conservatoires, has a collection of buildings located on an extremely constrained site in South Kensington. We were asked (alongside John Simpson Architects) to resolve the difficulties caused by piecemeal additions to its campus in the 1960s and 70s. This had left the buildings – originally designed by Arthur Blomfield and Sidney Smith between 1894 and 1901 – inefficient to use and difficult for both students and visitors to navigate. Named the ‘More Music Project’, other aims were to provide additional facilities and to upgrade existing ones to conform with evolving legislation.
Our work was centred on a new external quad at ground level, accessed from an enlarged entrance hall and a new triple-height foyer which has improved access and now serves as the social heart of the complex and is central to the new circulation pattern in enabling access to the lifts and stairs. A café-bar, restaurant and new kitchen facilities have also been incorporated.
Below this are now two multifunctional performance venues, acoustically insulated and with adjustable acoustics for different types of music. Supplementing these are more performance, practice and teaching spaces that enable recording and streaming, as well as a new museum to display the college’s significant collection of historic musical instruments.
The building was opened by HM King Charles III in 2023 and went on to win The Georgian Group’s Diaphoros Prize, with the judges admiring “the way the circulation problems have been solved and the way in which the new works complement and tie the existing buildings together’.
The scheme enhanced the College’s status as one of the premier destinations for world-class music education; strengthened the College as a cultural venue of national and international significance; and created a greatly enhanced environment that inspires students, professors, visiting musicians.
Architect John Simpson Architects
Client Royal College of Music