Meeting House, University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex
Address
Meeting House, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QFRecommended by
Highlight
Coloured panels on the upper floor of the Meeting HouseArtist, maker and date
Basil Spence, 1966Reason for highlighting
The ground floor has a multi-purpose space that can be used for quiet contemplation during the day and public meetings or recitals at night. On the first floor is a 350-seater interdenominational chapel. The chapel walls are two feet thick and composed of a honeycomb of concrete blocks and coloured glass panels. These are arranged in a spectrum colour sequence with the brightest yellows behind the altar. Although the building is quite Brutal the intense amount of colour in the chapel is calming and up-lifting.
Artist/maker notes
Sir Basil Spence OM OBE RA (1907-76) was born in Bombay / Mumbai to Scottish parents, and studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art, winning the RIBA Silver Medal for the best architecture student in Britain. He is most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England and the Beehive in New Zealand, but also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Modernist/Brutalist style.
Sources:
Basil Spence entry on Wikipedia
Journey into the Light: The Art Treasures of Coventry Cathedral by John Willis, Sarah Walford, Dianne Morris and Katherine Margaret Lee
Anthony Blee (b.1935) was a partner in the practice of the seminal British proponent of modernist/brutalist architecture, Sir Basil Spence. Blee joined the practice during the project to reconstruct Coventry Cathedral in 1956, and continued to run the practice after Spence’s death in 1976. He married Spence’s daughter, Gillian, in 1959, and they were the first couple to be married in the undercroft of the unfinished Coventry Cathedral.
Source: Journey into the Light: The Art Treasures of Coventry Cathedral by John Willis, Sarah Walford, Dianne Morris and Katherine Margaret Lee
Other comments
The roof is a copper covered reinforced concrete conical shell, with an oval roof light set at an angle at the highest point so that daylight is directed onto the altar area. This was designed by Spence’s son-in-law and business partner Anthony Blee and made in coloured glass and black epoxy resin. The building won a Civic Trust Award in 1969 and is a Grade II* listed building.