Arts Faculty Building, University of St Andrews

Reiach and Hall’s new Arts Faculty building is the first significant contemporary building - and the newest addition to the historic town centre campus - commissioned by the University of St Andrews in over 30 years. Won through competitive interview, the new Arts Faculty building accommodates the Department of International Relations, smaller research groups in academic offices, seminar rooms and social spaces. The new building sits next to the four-storey University Main Library and postgraduate departments housed in a substantial Victorian townhouse. The library, built in the 1970’s, occupies a position that might have been expected to be an open court or quadrangle and the resultant open space in front of the library was poorly defined. The new Arts Faculty building ‘repairs’ the current urban diagram, and with the cloistered, social, open forum on the ground floor brings life and a feeling of community to a central hub of the University.