Assemble has transformed hidden industrial spaces at London’s Laurie Grove Baths into a 1,000 sqm arts centre for Goldsmiths university that celebrates the building’s patina.

The Turner Prize-winning architecture collective has given the Grade II-listed structure – located on the university’s campus in New Cross – a new public identity as the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. At its heart is a double-height gallery for installations and performances, with layers of patched masonry, glazing and beams left exposed. Two new ‘white cube’ gallery spaces provide a visual contrast.

‘The design offers a series of very diverse and distinctive rooms for display – contrasting qualities of light, varying proportions, different levels of finish, a range of environmental qualities,’ says Assemble’s Adam Willis.

Goldsmiths CCA holds a total of seven gallery spaces, a café, curators’ studio and an event space. Assemble have preserved the water tanks and created a new central balcony offering views into the Victorian bathing halls, where Goldsmiths’ art students work.

Assemble have clad part of the building in an undulating turquoise concrete facade, inspired by the ceramic tiles found within the Victorian baths. Upping the level of craftsmanship are handmade concrete and ceramic architectural elements, cast in Assemble’s Sugarhouse Studios.

Goldsmiths CCA is inaugurated by the work of Argentine artist Mika Rottenberg, whose installations play with the architecture of the building by adding moving partitions, false spaces and leaking ceilings, that splash water onto steaming saucepans below.

Goldsmiths CCA opens to the public on 8 September 2018. Video cover image: Installation view, Mika Rottenberg, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, 8 September – 4 November 2018. Photography: Andy Keate. Image courtesy of the artist and Goldsmiths CCA

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