Waltham Forest College | Platform 5 Architects

The Waltham Forest College refurbishment by Platform 5 Architects in cooperation with Richard Hopkinson Architects exists, as an old professor of mine would say, as ‘box within a box’. A layering of space and interjection of place works to develop a built analogue for the operation of learning. Ok, bear with me here- I propose that to learn, one must observe, whether it is passively or actively, some quanta or ‘packet’ of information as a first event. From that point, interest in whatever this ‘fact’ is, is piqued and a further exploration begins. From this point knowledge is gained. And this is a sort of stop and go, surge and recede process, always driven by those quanta. The knowledge is locked away in something- it must be worked at by those who desire it. Throughout, a physical embodiment of this ‘introduction in wait of interest can be read’- whether in a window set flush on an interior wall, encouraging a walk down the hall to look in; an information desk that seems to sit behind a viewing screen; or a glazed seminar box which hangs in defiance of gravity in the center of the main learning space, almost pulling you up the staircase to see what’s going on inside.