page_title: University of Essex
section_title: Campus and architecture
hierarchical_section_title: University of Essex / Campus and architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: The Meadows student accommodation, Colchester Campus, University of Essex
context_page_description: The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. It was established in 1963, welcomed its first students in 1964 and received its royal charter in 1965. Essex is a plate glass university, a group of universities which were established in the 1960s. Essex's motto, ’Thought the harder, heart the keener’, is adapted from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon.
  Essex's largest campus is the Colchester Campus within Wivenhoe Park, less than a mile from Wivenhoe and two miles from Colchester. There is also a campus in Southend-on-Sea and East 15 Acting School is based at the Loughton Campus. Essex has 19 academic partnerships in the UK and around the world. UK partnerships include University of Essex Online with Kaplan Open Learning; Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and University of Essex International College. International partnerships include a franchise arrangement with Kaplan Singapore and double and dual degrees with several universities in Europe and Asia. This includes a double degree with Northwest University in Xi'an approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education.
context_section_description: Wivenhoe Park, the home of Colchester Campus, was painted by landscape painter John Constable in 1816. The park houses the main 1960s buildings along with Wivenhoe House, an 18th-century mansion that also features in Constable's painting. Wivenhoe House hotel was closed in December 2010 for major refurbishment and reopened in 2012 as a combined four-star country house hotel and hotel school. The Edge Hotel School was originally a partnership between the university and the Edge Foundation and is now a department of the university. It is the UK's first working hotel school dedicated to the development of future leaders of the hotel and hospitality industry.
  With its concrete architecture, the university is typical of England's 1960s universities and was heavily influenced by the international Brutalist architecture movement. Due to its particular form of architecture involving the use of prefabricated concrete and glass, the university is also referred to as a plateglass university.
  The architect of the campus, Kenneth Capon, took the Tuscan town of San Gimignano with its squares and towers as an inspiration (the university has six residential towers mainly for undergraduates, but the original plan was to build 29).
  The landmark buildings include the residential towers, The Hexagon and the Albert Sloman library - which was selected as an ‘icon of British design’ by the Victoria and Albert Museum in its 2012 exhibition British Design 1948–2012. The library has one of the few remaining still operating continuous loop paternoster lifts in the country.
  An exhibition called Something Fierce was created in The Hexagon to celebrate the university's 50th anniversary in 2014, reflecting on the university's founding vision and its relationship with its architecture. The exhibition was curated by art historian Jules Lubbock and director of the university's Art Exchange gallery. The university's original buildings were also featured in the Futures Found exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2017 which reflected on post-war architecture in the UK.
  The Silberrad Student Centre and extension of the Albert Sloman Library completed in 2015 were designed to reflect the Brutalist architecture of the original campus buildings. The project was named RIBA Regional Building of the Year Award in 2016.
  Essex Business School also opened in 2015 and won the Design through Innovation category at the RICS Awards 2016 for the East of England.
caption: The Meadows student accommodation
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