Falmer House Including Moat Within Courtyard

BRIGHTON

TQ3408 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX 577-1/11/1131 Falmer House including moat within 30/03/93 courtyard

GV I

Central communal building for the university. 1960-62. Designed by Sir Basil Spence. Red brick and bare, board-marked concrete. Timber window frames. Flat roofs with roof-top projections covered in copper. PLAN/EXTERIOR: quadrangular form, with partly open ground floor. Irregular facade of 3 storeys, 'chunkily' detailed, with brick walls separated at floor height by deep, bare, board-marked concrete strips. Ground floor arcades and many of the windows have segmental arches set within the concrete lintels. Former refectory (now a hall) on west, of 2 storeys in height, dominated by segmental barrel vault which breaks above the horizontal parapet of the building. Many 'cells' of the building on the south and east sides are left unenclosed. To north side, main staircase is flint-faced and is given emphasis by V-shaped roof feature. INTERIOR: contains double height former refectory with mezzanine, and fine Ivon Hitchens mural; also debating chamber with complex top-lit octagonally shaped roof and answering octagonal sunken seating area with segmented timber cover; also double height common room with 'chunky' timber staircase. Falmer House was the first building to be constructed on campus and was designed as its focus. Sussex University is historically important as the first of the post-war generation of universities to be founded, planned and built afresh, as a totality. (Architectural Review: Birk: Building the New Universities : October 1963).

Listing NGR: TQ3459008940