RCA Celebrates 175th Anniversary

The College will hold a number of events throughout the year to celebrate its dodransbicentennial. This will include exhibitions, alumni events in the USA and UK, and the publication of a history of the RCA written by Fiona McCarthy. Neville Brody, Dean of the School of Communication, has designed the special 175 anniversary logo, which will be used throughout the year.

Known for the outstanding quality of its graduates, from Christopher Dresser, Edwin Lutyens, Gertrude Jekyll in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, to fashion designer Erdem, Oscar-winning animator Suzie Templeton and designer Paul Cocksedge in the twenty-first century, the RCA is the world’s oldest and most influential university of art and design.

Other graduates include giants of British Modernism Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Frank Auerbach; artists Sir David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj and Bridget Riley; designers Robin and Lucienne Day, fashion designers Ossie Clark and Zandra Rhodes in the swinging sixties, followed by Sir James Dyson, Sir Ridley Scott, Thomas Heatherwick, Tracey Emin, the Chapman Brothers, Christopher Bailey and Orla Kiely.

In 1837, the then Government School of Design opened its doors for the very first time to an initial intake of just 12 students in a wing of Somerset House. 175 years on, the Royal College of Art has an enrolment of over 1,100 students, attracting the best and the brightest from 58 countries.

In its current incarnation, the College is far removed from the one experienced by those original 12 students. When it first opened, all students were male, with the first female students only being admitted in 1842.

Geographically the College was initially rather itinerant, moving as it did from Somerset House to Marlborough House in 1852 and then, in 1857, in the wake of the Great Exhibition, to South Kensington, sharing space with the Museum of Manufactures, later to be known as the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 1900, with 400 students, the then Principal Augustus Spencer requested more accommodation from the Office of Public Works; he was granted a few temporary huts made of wood and tin between Exhibition Road and Queen’s Gate.

In 1940, following the Battle of Britain, the College was evacuated to Ambleside in the Lake District. Not all staff were able to go however, as many were on active service, including Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and Edward Bawden – all having been appointed official war artists. The RCA was to remain in Ambleside until the end of the war. In 1949, back again in Exhibition Road, the RCA acquired the leases of 21 and 23 Cromwell Road, and the School of Fashion opened in 20 Ennismore Gardens.

In 1959, the architect H.T. Jim Cadbury-Brown began work on the Darwin Building in Kensington Gore, next door to the Albert Hall, and in 1962 what came to be known as his most prominent work opened its doors to a first intake of students (and thus celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year). Five years later, in 1967, the College was granted its Royal Charter. The objectives of the Charter were as follows: 'To advance learning, knowledge and professional competence particularly in the field of fine arts, in the principles and practice of art and design in their relation to industrial and commercial processes and social developments and other subjects relating thereto through teaching, research and collaboration with industry and commerce.'

In 2008 work began on a new £37m campus in Battersea. The Sackler Building, housing Painting opened in 2009, the Dyson Building, which will be home to Printmaking and Photography as well as a new lecture theatre, gallery space and Innovation RCA, the College’s business network, will open in September 2012, and the third and final stage, the Woo Department for Applied Arts, is due for completion in 2015.

In five years time, the Royal College of Art plans to house approximately 1,500 students over its two campuses, north and south of the river. Growing and expanding, it will offer an increasing number of academic programmes in order to meet the demands of a whole new generation of students.

New Masters' programmes coming on stream in 2012 include Interior Design, Service Design and Information Experience Design. Programmes in the pipeline include: MArch in Architecture in the City, Global Innovation Design, History of Photography & Film, Moving Image, and Documentary Animation.

Summer 2012 also marks the arrival of curator and academic Professor Ute Meta Bauer, who joins the College as Dean of the School of Fine Art from MIT in Boston.

Dr Paul Thompson, Rector of the Royal College of Art said:

'From its nineteenth-century roots with design prodigy Christopher Dresser, through to the present day, the RCA plays a seminal role internationally in creative thought and practice. So many leading artists, writers, and designers have studied at the RCA, its influence over 175 years has profoundly shaped and enhanced modern life.'