Summary : When it came to designing the student accommodation for the University of East Anglia (UEA) the inital favour was for the well-tried colliegate type until it was admitted that modern students would not like the formality and surveillance of colleges. Yet there was a nervousness that a mere hall might be bleak and alienating. A middle way was therefore sought combining the social coherence of one and the informality of the other. At this point, the traditional architectural arrangement of the staircase. It was suggested that the 'moduls' of student residence for UEA should be the staircase of about a dozen study bedrooms with a kitchen and common room as the social focus of each minature group. These 'families' might then be added together to make 'residential blocks of varying sizes, sufficiently distinctive to generate their own loyalties but intergrated architecturally with the central complex of university buildings of which they should be subordinate elements.' The stepped form of Suffolk Terrace is based upon considerations of social density, view, daylight, proximity and sighting with the form showing a Malayan influence in ziggurats. It is linked to the Teaching Wall by means of a walkway. |