The Seats We Document — CHO Academic

CHO Academic

The Seats We Document

Schools of architecture, art and conservation work in remarkable buildings, and most of those buildings have no public record of their own. These are the ones our archive keeps.

What this page is, and what it is not

Every institution below has a page in our archive about the building it occupies: its dates, its architect where one is known, what happened in it, and the sources we used. We wrote those pages because the buildings are worth recording, not because the institutions asked us to.

A name here does not mean the institution has joined the programme. It means we document its seat. Institutions that have joined CHO Academic are listed on the partner institutions page, and they appear there only after they confirm.

If you work at one of these institutions: tell us what is wrong on your page and we will correct it the same day. Send us a photograph and we will put it on the page, as the opening image or in a gallery below the text, credited as you ask. Both are free, and neither obliges you to anything.

The seats

Austria

The Academy on Schillerplatz

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna · Vienna
Theophil Hansen’s building on the Ringstraße, opened 1877.

Belgium

The abbey of La Cambre

ENSAV La Cambre · Brussels
A Cistercian abbey of 1201; Henry van de Velde opened his school in it in 1926.

Arenberg Castle

KU Leuven, Engineering Science and Architecture · Leuven
Held by the Dukes of Arenberg until the First World War, given to the university in 1916.

The Franciscan friary, Mutsaardstraat

Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp · Antwerp
The academy was installed here by Napoleon’s decree of 1810.

The Bijloke

KASK, Royal Academy of Fine Arts · Ghent
Seven hundred and fifty years of medical care, then an arts campus.

The Schaarbeek block

KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture (Sint-Lucas) · Brussels
A convent, a modernist pavilion and a row of houses, taught in as one school.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Evangelical church on the Miljacka

Academy of Fine Arts · Sarajevo
The only Evangelical church of Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo, given to the city by its last parishioner.

Brazil

The Vilanova Artigas building

FAU USP, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism · São Paulo
Six floors joined by ramps, no climate control and almost no doors, by decision.

China

The Mogao Caves

Dunhuang Academy · Dunhuang
The cave temples the academy exists to conserve.

The Forbidden City

Palace Museum, Conservation Department · Beijing
The palace complex whose conservation laboratories work inside it.

The Huajiadi campus

Central Academy of Fine Arts · Beijing
Grey courtyards by Wu Liangyong, with a museum by Arata Isozaki.

Croatia

The Technical Faculty, Kačićeva 26

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Architecture · Zagreb
Milovan Kovačević’s best work, finished in 1940.

Cuba

The National Art Schools, Cubanacán

Instituto Superior de Arte · Havana
Brick vaults on a confiscated golf course; the ballet school was never finished.

Czech Republic

The academy on the Letná slope

Academy of Fine Arts · Prague
A Baroque palace built in 1900 for a school founded in 1799.

The faculty at Dejvice

Czech Technical University, Faculty of Architecture · Prague
Alena Šrámková made it plain on purpose, to lead students towards humility.

Denmark

Holmen

Royal Danish Academy, architecture school · Copenhagen
Three centuries of the Danish navy, opened to the city in 1996.

Egypt

The Grand Egyptian Museum

GEM Conservation Centre · Giza
Thirty-three years from the decision to the opening, and the laboratories behind the galleries.

Estonia

The Rauaniidi factory

Estonian Academy of Arts · Tallinn
An iron-thread factory, cut open and kept rather than replaced.

Finland

The Otaniemi main building

Aalto University · Espoo
Alvar Aalto’s campus, and the stepped auditorium that is its face.

France

The Flore wing of the Louvre

École du Louvre · Paris
Inside the palace since 1882, and in this wing since 1998.

Galerie Colbert

Institut national du patrimoine, with the INHA · Paris
An arcade of 1826, demolished in 1983 and rebuilt.

Ateliers Saint-Sabin

The workshops of the Maison Jansen, decorators; a design school since 1982.

Hungary

The drawing school on Andrássy Avenue

Hungarian University of Fine Arts · Budapest
It also held the first Kunsthalle and the Academy of Music.

Italy

Castello del Valentino

Politecnico di Torino, Architecture and Design · Turin
A UNESCO site among the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy.

Città Universitaria

Sapienza Università di Roma · Rome
Marcello Piacentini’s campus, and its rectorate.

The Tolentini gate

Università Iuav di Venezia · Venice
Carlo Scarpa’s gate at the entrance to the former convent.

Romania

The Cerchez building, Strada Academiei

Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism · Bucharest
Raised 1916–27 as a manifesto of the national style.

Strada Budișteanu 19

National University of Arts · Bucharest
The school two painters talked a prince into, in 1864.

Casa Alecu Balș

George Enescu National University of Arts · Iași
The first play in Romanian was acted here in 1817; Liszt played here in 1847.

United Kingdom

Somerset House, Strand block

The Courtauld · London
Built by Sir William Chambers, 1775–80; the Royal Academy was here until 1837.

The Mackintosh Building

The Glasgow School of Art · Glasgow
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork.

Scroope Terrace

University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture · Cambridge
Its 1959 extension was opened by Le Corbusier and Henry Moore.

If your institution is not here

The archive holds just under seventeen thousand places, and this page lists only the seats we have written up so far. If your school works in a building with a history, tell us and we will look at it. We document what is worth documenting, whether or not anything follows from it.

About CHO Academic · Partner institutions · Write to the editors

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