UAL turns Atterbury Flat guest apartment into riotous student design archive
The University of the Arts London has transformed a drab guest quarters at one of its colleges into a colourful showcase that lets visitors eat, sleep and bathe in student and graduate design. The two-bedroom Atterbury Flat – located on the Chelsea C
The University of the Arts London has transformed a drab guest quarters at one of its colleges into a colourful showcase that lets visitors eat, sleep and bathe in student and graduate design. The two-bedroom Atterbury Flat – located on the Chelsea College of Arts campus, a Grade II listed former Royal Army Medical College building – has been used to host visiting professors and dignitaries since the university moved into the premises in 2005. But University of the Arts (UAL) lecturer Zoë Tynan-Campbell saw an opportunity to turn it into something more – a living and "live-in" archive of student work that had so far gone largely uncollected by the university. UAL is the second top-ranked university for art and design in the world, with six colleges including Central Saint Martins under its banner, allowing her to draw from a deep well of talent. Working with alumni Abigail Rigby and Bhairavi Yogasivam as co-curators, Tynan-Campbell engaged more than 400 students and graduates from 58 courses across all colleges in the endeavour, ultimately purchasing 117 works for the first round of acquisitions. These range from fantastical pieces that attracted attention at graduate shows – like a colour-changing chair and a conceptual coffee table made of 160 kilograms of stacked paper – to widely available products from companies established by UAL veterans. The latter category includes refillable soap by Blackmarket, foldable clothes hangers by Easy Hang and cookware hand-moulded from Indian river clay by Tiipoi. Many of the pieces were made specifically for the flat, including bathroom tiles and a matching sink in a gradient of greens by ceramicist and County Hall Pottery director Emma Louise Payne, as well as a giant pencil by multidisciplinary designer Neha Ratanchand for signing the guestbook. No object is too small to be unworthy of creative attention – a pair of scissors, a pack of tarot cards, several tea towels and a recycling bag made of recycled bags are among the alumni contributions – but some ordinary furniture from the old flat remains, awaiting replacement as the archive expands. "Part of the intention is asking questions around what we collect and what we value," said Tynan-Campbell. "Because we have a fine art collection as an institution... but most of it is paintings and photographs and 2D work, basically." "So this is us saying, okay, well, we have six universities, we have so many different disciplines, why is only fine art worth collecting?" she continued. "Why are we not collecting the narratives, the stories, the objects that all these other courses are producing?" "And of course, there's loads of practical reasons why not. One is space, which is why this is perfect, because we didn't have to build a space. This was here, and it was a blank canvas." The flat presently contains 117 items designed by current and former students A giant pencil is one way to sign the guest book A conceptual work made from a stack of paper has been repurposed as a coffee table
The Atterbury Flat has been reimagined as a "live-in" archive of student work
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本内容采集自海外公开设计资源「Dezeen」。原作者/机构：Rima Sabina Aouf。原文链接：https://www.dezeen.com/2026/09/21/ual-atterbury-flat-student-design-archive/。授权说明：RSS 公开聚合输出，版权归 Dezeen 及原作者所有；本站仅引用标题、摘要与原图链接，用于学习交流。。本站仅作学习参考，图片以原链接方式引用、未加水印、未二次分发；版权归原作者所有。
