Austin-Smith:Lord was appointed as Lead Designer for the RIBA Award-winning, £10m new build Cardiff School of Art & Design, which is the second major phase of development at the campus following the RIBA Award winning Cardiff School of Management. The internationally recognised School is now able deliver all its courses and develop its research in a modern facility that brings together all of its interests in fine art, ceramics, product design, illustration, making, graphic communication, textiles and architectural design and technology. We assisted the client in developing the design brief and we produced a number of design options to suit the constrained site. An options appraisal was carried out, with the preferred option developed through to a successful planning submission. The client’s aspiration was for an inherently simple to use and low energy building, delivering a high quality piece of design befitting of the School of Art & Design and raising the profile of the Llandaff campus. The building is designed around an in-situ concrete superstructure. Concrete floors, soffits and walls have been left exposed to provide robust self-finishes, and thermal mass to aid environmental control of the spaces. Generous floor to floor heights provide spacious open plan studio spaces, inherently flexible in use, with full height windows allowing good daylight penetration. The building is predominantly naturally ventilated using cross ventilation, with air being drawn up through two central void spaces using the ‘stack effect’. Simple controls have been used in place of more complex ‘remote’ system, in order to allow occupants to control their own spaces and provide a low cost solution with minimal future maintenance costs.