New College of North West London campus is earmarked for the site of the Olympic Office Centre

Demolition work is expected to start next spring after proposals for a new 14,000sq m campus for the College of North West London have won the backing of Brent Council.

Members of the authority鈥檚 Planning Committee have resolved to grant permission for the eight-storey development, earmarked for the site of the Olympic Office Centre in the shadow of Wembley Stadium.

Final planning approval for the scheme, designed by Wilkinson Eyre and which will cater for 3,000 students a week and have 250 staff, now rests with the Greater London Authority.

CNWL_Exterior

Source: Wilkinson Eyre

Wilkinson Eyre鈥檚 Wembley campus, designed for the College of North West London

The 拢60m construction contract is being let as a two-stage deal although no firm has yet been formally appointed. Firms thought to have run the rule over the scheme include Wates and Morgan Sindall.

Demolition is expected to start next May with the college due to be completed by the end of 2026.

Others working on the job include QS Stace, M&E consultant Max Fordham and structural engineer Eckersley O鈥機allaghan.

Wilkinson Eyre said its concept for the building organised and expressed college activities 鈥 ranging from construction skills to English for speakers of other languages and health-and-beauty courses 鈥 in a series of identifiable horizontal layers, linked through a full-height atrium.

Heavy-duty construction engineering workshops are at the base of the building, visible from Olympic Way. Escalators take the main student cohort to the campus鈥 second-floor concourse, which hosts student services, a cafeteria, a TV studio, and a large outdoor amenity deck with views up to the Wembley Arch.

site photo 2019

Source: Wilkinson Eyre

The new campus will occupy the site of the Olympic Office Centre, pictured next to the Novotel

The five floors above are mixed-mode flexible arrangements of classrooms and social study spaces that will be naturally ventilated with decentralised mechanical ventilation with heat recovery.

The third floor features a unit for students with profound and multiple learning difficulties, designed to 鈥渢read a careful line between inclusion and separateness鈥.

The top floor has senior management team accommodation; staff areas are distributed on each floor of the building.

Wilkinson Eyre鈥檚 client for the project is United Colleges Group, which was formed through the 2017 merger of the College of North West London and City of Westminster College.