Designing a new art and design building for the Royal College of Art is a balancing act. On the one hand, the RCA is an outward-facing institution, looking to showcase its facilities, students and their work – in part to attract the very best students of the future and to give its many funders (including the government) something to boast about. On the other hand, it is all about experimentation and safe spaces: trying out ideas, testing them until they break.

Successful studio spaces give their occupants licence – licence to screw things into the walls, paint the ceiling, take an angle grinder to the floor. Experimentation, and the inevitable failure that goes with taking risks, requires a degree of introversion, ownership and control, rather than picture windows to Battersea Bridge Road. Similarly destructive transformations of space are not obviously welcome activities in £135m flagship buildings.

Herzog & de Meuron’s solution to this dilemma is essentially a shell and core: the practice has designed a strong, urban figure wrapped in a decorative facade and a simple, robust interior with an emphasis on flexibility. Studio spaces are raised above the ground floor, and windows are arranged to prioritise light and air rather than views in.

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