With the rain coming down onto Rosehill in a mist of undecided droplets, the coach stood on Woodlane; as out of place and odd as the building that lay at the centre of this tour around the Tremough Campus and the surrounding area. Boarding a coach first always stirs feelings of importance in kids, and, being a big kid still, this time was no exception! "straight to the back" was the call and... Well, it just had to be done!
Once everyone had sat down and got themselves settled into their seats Jim, in tour guide mode, distributed a tourist guide to Cornwall, I suppose in an attempt to make the distinction to anyone who watched us flock around Tremough that we were in fact 'outsiders'. In a major way though the map serves as one contextual layer of everything we do here in Falmouth. Rather unexpectedly, as the bus moved off, Jim took his role as tour guide and made it his own...
As we turn onto Melvill Road he exclaims that Falmouth is a relatively new town, about three to four hundred years old. The explanation for this is a simple one; before that time the bulk of the South coast was not safe against attack from invading forces and the constant threat from Buccaneers and pirates. The castles of Pendennis and St. Mawes were some of the first structures to exist around the mouth of the River Fal, both completed in the 1540's. The beginnings of the town (according to Pevsner) didn't come for almost one hundred and fifty years later with the construction of The Church of King Charles the Martyr (1662-5) paid for by Sir Peter Killigrew. His house lies at the end of Avenue Road (Arwennack House) with the monument to his life (1737) standing opposite in all its Egyptian austerity.
We go straight out of Falmouth and into Penryn, following the riverbank towards Truro. As we turn around the harbour wall Jim explains that the industry that has kept Penryn afloat after the migration of importance down river was the shipping of the Granite mined out of the hills above the town. Before that it had been (from the early 13th century) the equivalent of Falmouth. Glasney College, founded in 1265 is drawn by Jim as a very interesting link into the past as a sort of temporal rudder for CUC to take Cornish education into the future. As we head up the main street, around the Wren-esque Town Hall we see the different eras of architechture laid out infront of us as we continue over the hill and back down to the A39 and the grotesqueries of the industrial estate and ASDA and B&Q beyond. We now travel up the bypass; alongside the estate that the college purchased from a Convent School in 1999. You can't see the magnificent new buildings on the site until you drive up the granite lined driveway past the vast building sites and a curious grey stone building on the left.
The first thing that hits you about the main building on the Tremough campus is the sheer size and boldness of the design. It towers over the road like a giant blue and black spaceship sitting on a rocky outcrop. It is impressive, not oppressive; it reeks of high design and all the decisions made to be different and conform all at the same time. It is supposed to conform with the planning regulations that were no doubt very tough for such a large building being placed within such a vista.
One of the first things mentioned after we got off the bus was one of the solutions to the planning regulations. The tree next to Jim (picture, right) is revealed to be a Sequoia; one of the Californian Giant Redwoods! Jim explains that the building can't break into the skyline... [para]So what do we do? Raise the skyline three hundred feet of course! The view is deemed to be an important one: 'one of the best in Cornwall' and it's easy to see how important it must have been to the three periods where building took place here. Obviously the main building at Tremough (picture, above) was designed to increase its impression of the landscape from within, but also the chapel (built in the nineteen-fifties, pictured below) shares the same important aspect. Jim recalls that when the college first bought the site there was a large relief of Jesus Christ on that wall.
We enter the main house through what is now the student services block. It is connected to the 18th century house via a lone corridor that shares the view over Penryn and the gardens of the house before it.
Once inside the house we walk down the main staircase (pictured, near left) and into the office at the bottom of the stairs... What we find inside is quite surprising considering that this house had been used as a convent school for so long. On the North side of the office there was a Wiccan pentangle very nicely inlaid into the oak paneling. My first thought was to the owner of the house that had it made! Jim continues; gathered in the hallway outside, he adds that down at the gatehouse on the old driveway there is a pond in the garden with the same shape.
With the house covered from several angles and views of parts of the interior etched into our short term memory it was on into the main part of the new development. As we had already seen the building from the bus stop it was time to head up the south side of the structure and through the garden entrance by the side of the design centre.
We come across several conflicting textures as we move into the heart of the courtyard. On the steps where we came in, their continuation leads onto the top of the design centre to the architect-designed roof garden. Jim tells us that the original idea is severely flawed as it was soon realised that depressed students or staff might well use it as a jumping off point (so to speak). We let ourselves into the design centre and look around its open-plan workspaces (pictured, below).
Back outside we discuss the problems and disparate nature of the juxtaposed buildings; the design centre with its organic curves, open plan work area and general positive feeling and the austere, formal shapes of the main library, office and lecture building. We are told they were designed by two different architects and that the rumour around campus is that they didn't really like each other! (It's not difficult to see why!) From the main courtyard we head up the seemingly endless pathway to the entrance of the lecture building.
Inside the main building we are greeted by the spinal corridor. In the floor's current configuration this corridor links the two columns of seminar rooms that in turn are separated by a network of moveable dividing walls.
We move into one of these rooms and discuss it's design's effect on the mood and general feeling of the room as a teaching space. We come to realise that the whole room is without any natural light... Why is this? It does seem strange when it's pointed out.
Ever onward further into the inner-reaches of the structure and towards the two large lecture theatres at the other end of the building. We sit for a while and look at the possibilities of the rather blank space while Jim carefully wraps up his tour of the buildings.
The future of Higher Education in Cornwall is secure so long as the drive behind the novelty and unique nature of the buildings and its occupants continue to exist in this south coast iddyl.
Below are some more photos that I took throughout the course of the tour.
So here we are, just over two weeks until the Film Festival of Cornwall opens its doors in the Princess pavilion right here in Falmouth and as a volunteer I was pouring wine and setting up the press opening this morning.
