University of East Anglia - History

History

The University of East Anglia opened in October 1963, not on its present campus, but in the "University Village" on the other side of Earlham Road, a collection of prefabricated structures designed for 1200 students, laid out by the local architectural firm Feilden and Mawson. There were no residences. The Vice-Chancellor and administration were based in nearby Earlham Hall.

In 1961, the first vice-chancellor, Frank Thistlethwaite, had approached Denys Lasdun, an adherent of the "New Brutalist" trend in architecture, who was at that time building Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to produce designs for the permanent campus. The site chosen was on the western edge of the city, on the south side of Earlham Road. The land, formerly part of the Earlham Hall estate was at that time occupied by a golf course. Lasdun unveiled a model and an outline plan at a press conference in April 1963, but it took another year to produce detailed plans, which diverged considerably from the model. The first buildings did not open until late 1966.

Lasdun put all the teaching and research functions into the "teaching wall", a single block 460 metres long following the contour of the site. Alongside this he built a walkway, giving access to the various entrances of the wall, with access roads beneath. Attached to the other, southern, side of the walkway he added the groups of terraced residences that became known as "Ziggurats". In 1968, Lasdun was replaced as architect by Bernard Feilden, who completed the teaching wall and library, and created an arena-shaped square as a social space of a kind not envisioned in his predecessor's plans. Many of the original buildings now have Grade II* listed status, reflecting the importance of the architecture and the history of the campus.

In the mid-1970s, extraction of gravel in the valley of the River Yare, which runs to the south of the campus, resulted in the university acquiring its own lake or "Broad" as it is often referred to. At more or less the same time, a bequest of tribal art and 20th century painting and sculpture, by artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, from Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury resulted in the construction of the striking Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the western end of the main teaching wall, one of the first major works of architect Norman Foster.

In 2005 the university, in partnership with the University of Essex, and with the support of Suffolk County Council, the East of England Development Agency, Ipswich Borough Council, Suffolk College, and the Learning and Skills Council, secured £15 million funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England for the creation of a new campus in the Waterfront area of Ipswich, called University Campus Suffolk or UCS. The campus opened in September 2007.

In January 2010 the University of East Anglia opened UEA London, a purpose built teaching facility near Liverpool Street Station in the City of London to provide facilities for more than 1,000 students.