The opening of Royal College of Art Woo Building, a significant expansion of the Ceramics & Glass and Jewellery & Metal department, marks the completion of the RCA’s highly anticipated Battersea Campus, bringing all of the RCA’s fine art programmes together at a single site for the first time in the institution’s history.

Seven years after winning the masterplan competition, the Royal College of Art Woo Building completes Haworth Tompkins’ trio of buildings, which also include the Dyson and Sackler buildings.

Along with Dyson and Sackler, the Woo Building completes Haworth Tompkins’ trio of buildings, which – with the earlier Sculpture Building – make up the Battersea campus. The Woo Building mirrors the factory-inspired Dyson, with a triple-height, glazed central hall accommodating specialist equipment alongside spacious workshops, while studios, offices and common spaces are housed on the three floors above.
Royal College of Art Woo Building is named in honor of Sir Po-Shing and Lady Helen Woo, who has a long-established relationship with the College, having funded scholarships for ceramics, glass, silversmithing, metalwork and jewelry students since the early 1990s. The building also received funding from The Wolfson Foundation and Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement. The striking new building was designed by award-winning architects Haworth Tompkins.

Haworth Tompkins worked in close collaboration with t...