Confetti London

Creating a New Campus in the Capital

Since 1994, Confetti has been offering creative industry courses to students in Nottingham. Following their success and growing demand for their degree and post-grad courses, they have created a new 35,000 sqft campus in central London. Here they will deliver the same high quality, real-world education in music, games and events as they have been successfully doing in Nottingham for so many years.

Site Redevelopment

The home for the new campus is within a large, creative redevelopment project, housed within an original 1960’s London Met university building. The existing concrete structure, typical of its time, has been given a complete makeover by the landlords development team, with a striking grey black facade. To create a contemporary feel, floor to ceiling glazing has been incorporated on the streetside, allowing for greater visibility into the building and the activities happening inside. The new main entrance to the Confetti/NTU campus is on a prominent corner of the building and so by opening this up with glazing it also creates a more inviting front for students.

Internal Design

AJA were appointed as architect and lead consultant of a multi-disciplinary team to design the facilities including a huge ground floor social space, near 600 capacity live performance venue, recording studios, virtual production studio, esports and content creation facilities and live and technical events training spaces. Alongside this there are large general teaching spaces and computer suites and support spaces.

The designs pick up the modern-industrial feel of the Nottingham campus, with exposed services and painted concrete soffits and contrasting walnut joinery to creating welcoming, flexible and spaces that can serve the various functions essential to reflect a quality student experience.

The entrance is large and bright, with a open reception area leading directly onto an open plan bar and social space where small events, informal meetings and social gatherings can be held.

Collaboration and Challenging Timescales

The wider development, including spaces within it for other tenants, was refurbished and fitted-out in parallel to the Confetti campus. AJA had regular design coordination meetings with Hawkins Brown (Architects for the landlord team) and also shared different site-teams of the same Contractor, Oktra to deliver the works. The designs for the Confetti project were conceived, developed and consulted upon by our project team and then handed over by the contractor for use by the university within an intensive and remarkable 18-month period.