RCA Battersea South Campus

As the world’s leading institution for the study of art and design, and a long time resident of the London Borough of Wandsworth, the RCA recognises that it has a key role to play in the community, by contributing to the cultural and creative richness and opportunity within Battersea and Wandsworth. The development of the Battersea South Campus offers the College an opportunity to foster a stronger and more sustainable relationship with both its immediate environment in Battersea and its wider community across the borough.

Futurecity devised a Cultural Strategy for this development, bringing together three key Cultural Principles that radiate out from its new site and seek to ensure it plays an integrated role in the social and cultural fabric of the local community: activation, partnership and engagement. From these principles emerged a specific set of designs and proposals that are either embedded within the core building design, emerging through relationships with neighbouring projects and organisations, or building on existing RCA relationships and initiatives in the borough that together create a unique contribution to the London Borough of Wandsworth’s wider schools and community engagement work.

The RCA’s legacy will be to create an improved public realm for the project’s immediate streets, contributing diverse and animated ground floor uses to the local area, and creating a positive impact on the opportunities for the borough’s communities to engage in creative arts and design practice and research of the highest level, inspiring new opportunities within this sector. It is thus committed to delivering the proposals in this strategy as part of and beyond the construction programme.