Five finalists vie to build a new university at Milton Keynes

Schemes by five design teams have been shortlisted in the competition to design a “new model university” in Milton Keynes. Organised by Malcolm Reading Consultants for Milton Keynes Council and Cranfield University, the competition attracted 53 team submissions comprising 257 individual firms from across the globe. The five teams who reached the second stage were asked to submit concept designs for the £188m phase one, including a masterplan and key buildings for the 10-ha site, and for 61,120 square metres of built area.

The university will occupy the last major undeveloped site in the city centre, and Cranfield intends to use the new University Quarter and the wider city as “a living lab to test out new concepts and ideas, and inspire students and citizens”.

More information on the schemes can be seen at the competition organiser’s website. A winner will be selected in late July 2019.

Team 1

Co:MK:U — Wilkinson Eyre and AECOM with Spaces that Work, Mecanoo, dRMM, Publica, Contemporary Art Society and Tricon.

“Team Co:MK:U has been inspired by the potential for MK:U to ‘make a great city greater’, a place intrinsically of Milton Keynes, where nature and city life are brought together offering qualities to fulfil the promise of Derek Walker’s original ‘City Club’ vision; sociable and welcoming to all.

The masterplan celebrates the spatial hierarchy of the city’s geometry, the planning grid generating an array of mixed-use building blocks for living and learning, predominantly low rise with residential buildings giving accents of height and three higher towers becoming beacons in the skyline to signify this new, exciting 21st Century institution. The Forum is not a single building but a clearing, a space to gather, in the heart of MK:U. The square—Avebury Square—is framed north and south by two public buildings. Each building across MK:U takes a subtly individual identity giving MK:U a built environment of distinctive and varied architectural character.”

Team 2

Hawkins\Brown with KCAP, Grant Associates, Buro Happold Engineering and Sam Jacob Studio.

“Milton Keynes originated as a place where knowledge, leisure, culture, technology and nature all come together, and this ambition continues to the present day. Milton Keynes University (MK:U) is a natural next step for the city as it becomes a place of national importance within the Oxford-MK-Cambridge corridor.

The original Milton Keynes Masterplan was likened to a net thrown across the English countryside, a layer of woven connections that mediates with the landscape. We have taken this metaphor, the campus as a network of connections embedded within a landscape, to inform a masterplan designed around a series of gardens, courts and vistas.

Our design brings people together in a series of flexible and deliverable, mixed-use buildings organised around a central spine. This generous landscaped promenade, on which every building has an address will become the beating heart of the campus – a place where memories are created and life-long friendships made.”

Team 3

Hopkins Architects with Prior + Partners, Expedition Engineering, Atelier Ten, Gross Max, Buro 4, RLB Schumann, GRFN, Caneparo Associates, QCIC, Nick Perry Associates, Access=Design, Cordless Consultants, Sandy Brown Associates, FMDC and Tricon.

“MK:U presents a unique opportunity to re-think higher education by bringing new academic and commercial activity, jobs and social life to the town centre. MK:U’s identity and sense of place is established from the outset by creating a ‘shop window’ along Avebury Boulevard. A bold new urban frontage adopts the format of the original MK vision with calm orthogonal buildings surrounded by greenery. This creates an open permeable quarter rather than an enclosed campus with strong and clear connections to surrounding developments and residential courtyards that open on to the public realm.

In this Learning City, a Living Lab approach delivers high value and high environmental performance. Buildings are simple and cost effective. Based on orthogonal grids with integrated engineering, MK:U’s buildings and places can be easily maintained and upgraded to suit future needs, are human scaled, spatially efficient and technically robust; a smart university for a smart city.”

Team 4

Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands with Architecture 00, Heyne Tillett Steel, Hoare Lea, Bradley-Hole Schoenaich Landscape Architects, Ken Baker, Steer, Iceni, Abell Nepp, Mark London, FMDC, People Friendly Design, PFB Construction Management and FiD.

“Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, in collaboration with architects and and landscape architects Architecture00, BHSLA and Ken Baker, plus a talented consultant team, have created a new university for Milton Keynes that harnesses MK:U’s positive, progressive energy to breathe new life into the city. Their vision for MK:U looks back to the joy of Milton Keynes’ original masterplan and forward to the smart, sustainable city that it wants to become with a new creative quarter that is walkable, diverse and attractive to everyone. Spreading out across the northern half of the site, along Avebury Boulevard, this new quarter will feel alive from the start, and an incremental growth strategy will harness public and private funding. The scheme embraces a model for learning that is interdisciplinary and exploratory, with a culture of entrepreneurship embedded within the design and construction process. And its public spaces will bring meadows into the city, alongside courtyards providing flexible and surprising inside/outside encounters.”

Team 5

OMA with BuroHappold, Planit-IE, Nicholas Hare Architects, Carmody Groarke, Galmstrup, Approved Consultant Services and Russell Partnership.

“MK:U represents a key moment in Milton Keynes ongoing evolution – the introduction of a place to learn, meet and live, in a context so far dominated by business and commerce. Our design proposal opts to inverse the central district’s standard block structure: the perimeter typically reserved for parking becomes a zone for building which “frames” the space typically reserved for buildings to become the university yard. The yard is the ambiance most typically associated with university life: the social space which binds the elements of the educational process together. Existing independently from any specific academic focus, the yard is as fitting for a university of “literature and the arts” as for one of “business and engineering”. Perhaps most significantly, it caters to an expectation of history, which, for a university without an established track-record, to be built in a town less than fifty years old, could prove of eminent importance.”