Universities and the City: from islands of knowledge to districts of innovation

We are witnessing a new trend in the design of university buildings and other ‘knowledge typologies’, that is, buildings in which knowledge is produced or disseminated, such as research laboratories or libraries. Increasingly, their design inverts the image of the closed ‘ivory tower’ through a layered intersection of inside and outside spaces, seeking to draw the life of the city and the life of the institution closely together. Using London’s ‘Knowledge Quarter’ centred in Bloomsbury, Euston and King’s Cross as a focus, this article traces a trajectory of typological evolution of university buildings which includes Adams, Holden and Pearson’s ‘ivory tower’ project for a new headquarters of the University of London (1932), of which only Senate House was built; Leslie Martin’s and Trevor Dannatt’s radical restructuring of the Georgian urban structure through the Development Plan of the University of London (1959); Denys Lasdun’s evolution and typological reworking of this plan through the Institute of Education (1970–1976); and Stanton Williams’ Central St Martins (2008–2011). In this trajectory, we see Martin’s and Dannatt’s Development plan for the University of London as an important pivot in the shift from the ivory tower of academia to the current urban landscape of learning and innovation. This paper argues that the contribution of typology to this urban transformation exceeds the representation of institutional missions and the generic descriptors of place. Instead, it posits that the typological development contributes to a broader urban ecology of change and transformation, one in which the respective urban agency of each project reimagines how urban vitalities, synergies and intensities might be instigated and maintained.


Introduction
London's Bloomsbury district, the biomedical cluster along Euston Road, and the ongoing development of King's Cross as creative cluster perform jointly as one of the world's leading 'innovation districts'. While Bloomsbury has long been known for its embedded institutions and universities, since the turn of the 21st century Euston Road has seen a visible transformation into a biomedical cluster through, among other projects, the tower of Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the expansion of the Wellcome Trust, and the Francis Crick Institute which opened recently behind the British Library. The extensive body of research into the geography of innovation districts has begun to acknowledge the significance of place and the role of knowledge institutions in the process of urban innovation. As knowledge producers, institutions universities are increasingly believed to make a significant contribution to the economic growth, social 'buzz', and creativity of the urban life of contemporary cities. Successful cities are frequently described as having developed an 'institutional thickness', a broad range of knowledge industries and a diversity of actors that help support innovation. i If aspects of urban life itself are now recognized as an essential resource for economic development and innovation, this is perhaps long overdue. That cities provide an ideal environment for innovationby offering proximity, density and varietyand, contrary to the predictions that developments in technology will disconnect people and firms from places, it has become clear that the knowledge economy has a very strong intrinsic spatial dimension. It has been acknowledged that cities are thriving in the knowledge economy because they offer trade and productivity benefits, they attract human capital and they facilitate the exchange of tacit knowledge. ii Big, specialized labour pools, transport infrastructure and density of activity are seen as key urban assets underpinning innovative activity and competitive performance within these emerging districts. Urban proximity and connectivity also help business and knowledge networks to form, increasing the flow of innovative ideas and bringing products to market. iii The flurry of new architectural projects in Bloomsbury, Euston and King's Cross, augment the area's concentration of institutions and partake of a new trend in which typological articulation is itself at the service of innovation. The Francis Crick Institute, the Wellcome Trust headquarters and Central St Martins exemplify this new trend in the design of 'knowledge typologies'. They share an emphasis on a physical 'presence' in the city, a layered intersection between inside and outside, public and private, which draws urban life into the interior of the institution. In these projects, permeability and connectivity tend to be further actualised through a high degree of visual or spatial porosity, at least at ground level, and supported by a fluidly evolving groundscape that interconnects external and internal spaces, blurs the boundaries between public and the private, even if the spaces within are privately owned and managed [ Figure 1].
Internally, these new 'knowledge typologies' tend to be structured around a key void, or atrium, that is lined with studios or workspaces and activated by large and often visually dramatic circulation spaces. The Francis Crick Institute, the Wellcome Trust headquarters and Central St Martins have similar plan diagrams with long, full height atria flanked by work or studio spaces. These atria act as foyers and provide the primary organising principle for their interiors, often pushing more traditional spaces of learning or working to the peripheries of the site and, in so doing, creating an explicit 'heart' of the institution, a quasi-civic space designed to promote social interaction, informal learning, knowledge exchange and dialogue between different users, and across disciplines. The designers of these places declare that this arrangement helps to break down barriers between disciplines, and to promote knowledge transfer or serendipitous encounters. Openness, connectivity and permeability between the interior and the established public realm is expressed in almost all new projects within the knowledge quarter, whether through a materially transparent façade, visual permeability at ground level and general spatial and programmatic fluidity. Put simply, the design trends of the new knowledge typologies are intended to render 'knowledge' itself transparent, to make it visible and accessible not only to those who are actively engaged in its pursuit, but also, to varying degrees, to the general public as well.
Despite the explicit connection between institutions, place, and networks of innovation, the contribution of architecture to the urbanism of innovation districts has received scant attention beyond its capacity for iconicity and semantic representation.
The comparatively small body of research on the urban and spatial dimension of innovation focuses on urban morphology, permeability, high quality public spaces and the mix of land use. iv Architecture is seen to be 'attractive', 'iconic' and contributing to 'a distinct offer of place'. v The recent proliferation of urban interiors has only very recently begun to become an objective of research as to its efficacy as a social learning space. vi  (1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976) and the library of SOAS (1970-1973to Colin St John's Wilson British Library (1982-1999; and, finally, to Stanton Williams' Central St Martins (CSM) (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) as exemplifying the present.
The objective of this narrative is twofold. First, it explores the evolution, variation and transformation of knowledge university typologies and the increasing complication with the adjacent urban spaces, thereby providing a genealogy of the current trends of knowledge typologies and what will be described as a continuous urban ground level of intensities and associations. This trajectory will attribute high value to the specificity of typological operations of each project. Secondly, it argues that the contributions of type to an urbanism of learning and innovation lies not so much in the direct transposition of institutional objectives as claimed by its authors, but instead in a broader contribution to urban change and transformation.

Charles Holden's University Precinct: An Academic Island
While "London University" was founded in 1826 as a secular alternative to the religious universities of Oxford and Cambridge, it was only in 1900 that it emerged as a teaching university and a federal institution with responsibility for monitoring course content and academic standards within the many institutions under its umbrella. vii  accommodate the governing body and its increasingly extensive administration, a library, as well as teaching spaces for a number of affiliated institutions a new site and location was sought. viii The brief of the building was set up accordingly, focussing on the administrative headquarters, the library, and teaching spaces responding to probable needs of the future. William Beveridge, the vice chancellor and a key driver behind the project, articulated the architectural vision as follows: The central symbol of the University on the Bloomsbury site can not fittingly look like an imitation of any other University, it must not be a replica from the Middle Ages. It should be something that could not have been built by any earlier generation than this, and can only be at home in London ... [the building] means a chance to enrich Londonto give London at its heart not just more streets and shops ... but a great architectural feature ... an academic island in swirling tides of traffic, a world of learning in a world of affairs. ix The design of 'an academic island' became the key objective of Adams, Holden and Pearson's ambitious original plans for the university buildings, which only came to be realized partially in the form of Senate House. The building was meant to collate a broad range of departments, colleges and other university functions. In a lecture to the RIBA, Holden describes the negotiation during the design process, the various stages of the design development and elaborates in much detail their architectural and urban qualities.
Following initial instructions for a quadrangle and a tower, Figure 2 exemplifies an early iteration of the plan for a building designed as a single structure stretching from Montague Place to Torrington Street [ Figure 2]; a spine linked by a series of wings to the perimeter buildings and enclosing courtyards. The scheme was to be topped by two towers, the taller Senate House and a smaller one to the north.
An iteration with a large open court at the southern end of the site was 'abandoned on account of the rigidity of the planning into arbitrary outlines ill-suited for the degree of flexibility which was felt to be desirable in a building with such a long future before it.' x The need for the potential for extension evolved into the generating principle of the plan. Accordingly, the 'spinal plan' was developed; first taking up the north part of the site, in the third iteration taking up its whole length.
The spine plan, its central axis aligned with that of the British Museum, occupies the center of the site and afforded larger open spaces on its sides, which, according to Holden, had the advantage for further isolating the university from the city. The spine was understood to provide a structure of growth, the spine and the ribs to the east to be built first, the addition of ribs to the west allowing the possibility of extension.
Circulation and Service cores would be housed in the intersection of the spine with the ribs, leaving the remainder of the spaces to be sub-divided at will. The principle of this organization in plan -a spine that can potentially extend and that provides generic and flexibly sub-dividable spaces, with ribs or wings as modes of extension will reappear in the plans of Martin and Dannatt and underlies the organization of Lasdun's' Institute of Education.
However, while Holden praises the simplicity and directness of his plan, the majority of his lecture is taken up to describe 'the impression of the masses', the composition balancing the scale of the tower in relation to the base structure; the spacing, rhythms and 'syncopation' of the fenestration and the visual presence of the building. Also the collection of drawings held in the RIBA drawing archive is testimony to Holden's primary objective to realize Beveridge's vision of the university as an urban symbol; it contains a plethora of hand sketches that experiment with proportion, massing and their spatial effects from a distance [ Figure 3]. Due to a lack of funds, the full design was gradually cut back, and only Senate House and Library were completed in 1937, although the external flanking wings of the north-eastern courtyard were not constructed. Nicholas Pevsner encapsulates Senate House's mixed reception in describing it as 'strangely semi-traditional, undecided modernism'. xi This description also captures different continuities of concepts: the 'modernist' growing, generic and flexible spine plan reoccurs some decades later in the plans of Martin, Dannatt and Lasdun. However, the urban contribution to their spines is radically different; instead of representing the symbol of the university and seeking to 'isolate' the university and the city, they begin to enfold urban space within the space of the university.

Total University Plans
The transformation of higher education propelled after WW2 can be understood as being part of the post-war consensus decades, during which the political elites, that is, government, senior civil servants, and academic advisors-broadly concurred on the appropriateness of a significant role for planning in social and economic development.
One manifestation was the expansion of public services such as housing and education. xii University architecture and planning emerged as a tool to forge no longer an elite, but to propel the economic and scientific prowess of the nation. In his study of post-war university architecture in Europe and North America, Stefan Muthesius describes the corresponding architectural 'utopian' vision of the new universities as an ideal and total environment, a concept subscribed to by educators and modernist architects alike. xiii At stake was not only to propel the expansion of university education, but also the very nature of education, its scope and objectives. A number of reports focussed on the shift towards science subjects: The Percy report of 1945 called for a quadrupling of trained engineers, the Barlow report of 1946 called for a doubling of trained scientists, , and the scientific manpower report of 1956 called for a further doubling. xiv In parallel the University Grants Committee laid plans for the substantial expansion of higher education and the development of new universities in the 1950s. xv The influential Robbins report of 1963 did not simply recommend a greater supply of university places, but argued for an expansion to ensure that all who were qualified and wished to enter should be able do so. Moreover, his recommendations included four main "objectives essential to any properly balanced system: instruction in skills; the promotion of the general powers of the mind so as to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women; to maintain research in balance with teaching, since teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth; and to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship.' xvi These principles came to be embedded and were seen to be propelled by university planning. The campus plan and the pedagogic principles it inscribed, was seen to provide a complete environment 'in which the moral influence of residential life and social interaction outside the classroom were as important as formal instruction'. xvii The vision of completeness also entailed a balanced curriculum, reacting against what was seen to be a problematic separation between disciplines, particularly between the arts and the sciences. One of the key debates at the time, the push towards the sciences was accompanied by stark warnings that only training across the sciences and humanities would produce thinkers of the future, and the complete man. xviii Accordingly, the unity between disciplines, the wholeness of the university experience, and the conception of the university as a collective of individuals came to be translated into a variety of formal solutions in the design of new universities, solutions that nonetheless shared a set of planning principles. xix New university campuses of the late 1950s and 60s, were designed to allow for growth and expansion, often through linear bands as the overarching structure and principle of lateral extension, or as a field or cluster that could grow radially. The pattern of growth, and the pedagogical principles formed the governing principle of the campus plans, often articulated as either a single superstructure, an urban megaform that linked and distributed teaching, residential and social spaces either in a single from, or as a conglomerate of linked forms. The compactness and wholeness of the plan, the efficiency of pedestrian connectionsalways separate from vehicular trafficaimed as much towards achieving a spatial and social coherence of the total university environment, as much as stimulate social interaction between students of different disciplines. 'The explosion of classical disciplinary boundaries' find their spatial expression in campus plans whose parts to whole relationships orchestrate cross disciplinary encounters in building segment or in communication spaces between dispersed functions. xx In many cases, the built structure consisted of flexibly occupiable teaching spaces, centrally timetabled, realising the concept of the '10 min university'the maximum time considered acceptable for pedestrian connections across the whole campus.
As Stefan Muthesius described, many of these principles, as well as the overarching ambition of correlating spatial and social organisation was utopian. xxi However, it is this highly utopian functionalist planning with its belief in shaping its subjects that forms the background for Martin and Dannatt's plan for the redevelopment of the University of London and Denys Lasdun's Institute of Education. While the concept of a complete teaching and learning environment described above favoured inward looking campus planning away from the cities, it is the transposition of some of the design principles into an urban context that renders these projects catalytic in terms of an engagement between the university and the city, even if this was not the objective of their authors.

Type and the reworking of a University Precinct
The design principles of Martin and Dannatt's plan for the redevelopment of the University of London suggest structures even larger than those of Holden, et al [ Figure   4]. Designed 30 years later, the 'Development Plan for the University of London Precinct' of 1959 articulates a very different conception of the relationship between the university and the city, buildings and urban morphology. Opposed to Holden's monumental, interiorised 'academic island' whose urban strategy foregrounds its visual presence and unified institutional nature within the pre-existing Georgian cityscape; the development plan proposes a radical transformation of Bloomsbury's urban fabric; a transformation that Lasdun subsequently inherits and comes to rework typologically.
The plan overlays long, slab-like buildings, pedestrian spines and walkways overlaid on the fabric of Bloomsbury, spanning across streets and leaping from one urban block to another. The authors describe it as follows: Martin's objective in the larger development plans was to provide a 'new structure for the layout of a university'. xxvii The 'structure' for Bloomsbury bears similarities to those proposed for the University of Hull [ Figure 5]. New and existing buildings are 'held together' by pedestrian bridges and linking buildings, in order to 'bring these (buildings) into relationship … to meet the demands of various faculties.' xxviii Generally, the buildings tend to define open courts or line urban or green voids, always with the intention to 'provide a sense of coherence'.
In the plan for Hull, two long 'malls' dominate the composition; the one at the edge of the model photograph shows a long dual slab building similar to the long double strip building forming the edge of the Bloomsbury plan. The other mall, linking into the existing building, serves additionally as 'the spine for new development', using planning and structural ideas similar to the most theoretical of Martin's university projects, the Oxford Science Areas, the Zoology and Psychology Building [ Figure 6].
Stepped sections provide generic teaching and research spaces, developed as a system that allows for growth and adaptation. Martin and Dannatt argued that the 'precinct should be thought of architecturally as a single entity'. xxxvi In their view, Abercrombie's and Forshaw's precinct envisaged not only a programmatic focus, but 'it implies also a certain segregation of and seclusion within the area itself. The university precinct might be thought of as an area from which through traffic is isolated. xxxvii As a consequence, the authors suggest the reduction of traffic ways (and even press for its elimination), as well as extend the possible areas of green spaces. The first floor terraces are seen 'to add to pedestrian convenience and facilities'. xxxviii Similarly to the planning principles of the Robbins era It bears similarities to Holden et al's 'ladder' plan: a spine with wings added according to need; a simple plan whose generic outlines can accommodate different departments. However, for Holden, the objective of the building appears to focus on the needs of the university itself, as something of distinction to be admired from a distance and also to be kept separate from the life of the city. In Martin's case, the new spatial order is performative in the sense that the built form seeks to organize spatial relationships engendered by a pure architectural object, but also in the complex spaces created between it and other buildings, a series of spaces that encourage associations within and beyond the academic community, and that to draw pedestrian movement into and across them by radically recasting the urban structure of this part of Bloomsbury.
While the proposed buildings are of a similar height to the pre-existing urban fabric, the plan represents a substantial reordering of familiar Georgian hierarchies: as opposed to the regular grid of street-based, closed urban blocks and defined, closed gardens, the new arrangement proposed a purposefully irregular pattern consisting of linked and dispersed solids and voids, its new urban permeability multiplying potential patterns of movement across the district and, from todays perspective, the potential for new modes of engagement through the intentionally ambiguous integration of new institutional buildings and functions with spaces accessible to the public. It is these design objectives that Lasdun takes up first in his 'redevelopment plans' and subsequently reworks typologically in his architectural proposals for the University of London. The long staggered building lining the edge of the Precinct is raised off the ground, to allow green space to flow beneath the building as well as to orchestrate the separation of the raised pedestrian walkway that connects to Gordon Square from the service road and vehicular access to the car park at ground level. Other key elements of his composition are the hollow square of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)(whose geometry in plan and section is similar to that employed by Leslie Martin in his library buildings), and, to complete the 'line of protection' facing east, a long slab housing further undefined UoL accommodation.

Lasdun's Urban Landscape
The 'full' scheme by Lasdun [ Figure 12] describes how the edge protection of the precinct has shifted from the strong figure of the double spine in plan towards a complex dual articulation of a single spine in section. The urban composition is a careful balance between the spine, its wings and the hollow square of the SOAS library .
The form of the library, an important architectural 'solid' within this composition, also helps to articulate and distribute adjacent void and green spaces. By contrast, the spine building exhibits a 'mute' and a 'dynamic' side: it's mute side defines and protects the precinct along Bedford Way with a continuous wall of teaching accommodation, structured by towers acting as service cores, whereas the more dynamic terraced wings, the raised plazas and intimate courts seemingly embrace and integrate with the garden and void space on the other side [ Figure 13] This metaphorical reading can also be applied to the winged spine of Bloomsbury: its section suggests and 'opening-up' of the institution; its appearance signalling greater equality and inclusion; its platforms acting as social stages for informal 'human inquiry and freedom'. Holden's inward looking, monumental spine here has been partly inverted, the emphasis on composition and massing in perspectival view has been replaced by the sectional activation of the interior of an urban block; the representational function of Holden has been replaced with visual synergy and dynamism.
And yet Lasdun's university precinct is serene. It seeks to balance the qualities associated with interiorised study and the potentially more dynamic 'extension of human relationships' into the precinct. For example, the section across the IOE and the SOAS library traces the public movement vector through the IOE, across the piazza with its auditorium underneath, and then along the public footpath, but is stopped by Lasdun's 'moat' surrounding the library. Here academic study is explicitly 'protected' from public life, opposed to today's trends which often seek to interconnect inside and outside of such buildings in a visually fluid spatial continuum. xlvi Lasdun's articulation of the spine with terraced wings has clear affinities with the functionally driven organization of Martin's Zoology and Experimental Psychology building in Oxford. However, he has rendered the stepped section into a visual and perceptual device to activate the urban realm, in distinction to Martin's objective to optimize the flexible planning of research and laboratory spaces. Lasdun 'opens' the building up through his terraces, in order to achieve visual and spatial synergies between the building and the adjacent public realm. He does not seek spatial synergies and programmatic activation between the building's interiors and the public realm beyond academic functions. The staggered sections, platforms and interlocking void spaces in his drawings of the 'Full Scheme' could be said to deliver 'sensitive gradations of levels and connections… rhythms and scales, satisfactory in themselves' as they do 'gathering places', designed to 'promote and extend human relationships'. In other words, Lasdun does not seek to attract a wider set of stakeholders or the public inside his buildings; here the type articulates a university precinct, not a contemporary innovation environment. However, read as an instance of typological reasoning addressing an urban problem, the buildings' sectional articulation and integration of the adjacent public realm invites a speculation on a further design move, for example in its transposition into the present. As a design concept, Lasdun's project could be reinterpreted with an expanded opening at ground level, and reprogrammed to actually allow permeability, connectivity and flow to a wider spectrum of the public. Similarly, we might also trace the conceptual seeds of the unfolding spatiality of the British Library foyer, or indeed in the street of Central Saint Martin's, by transposing Lasdun's staggered and terraced urban landscape with its potential to afford multiple types of occupation. The next section explores this transposition.

From the precinct to the knowledge quarter
The decades between the University of London Development Plan, the Institute of Education and the rise of the 'Knowledge Quarter' centred in Bloomsbury, Euston and King's Cross in the 1990s saw huge transformations of the economy, corresponding changes to the nature of higher education and its built manifestation. The rise of increasingly urbanized form of knowledge economies, aligned with globalization and neoliberalization, has reaffirmed of universities as privileged places where knowledge is produced and curated. xlvii This has entailed am economic, institutional and spatial intermeshing of universities and other typologies of knowledge with the city.
The legacy of the Robbins report ended in the 1980s, a decade in which the conservative government pursued a policy of expansion and underfunding, bringing the HE sector almost to a collapse in the 1990s. xlviii The Dearing report of 1997 addressed this economic crisis, and its proposed introduction of fees and a greater emphasis on vocational training and the economic purposes of higher education opposed to the previous focus on the advancement of knowledge and on the transmission of learning for its own sake. The Browne report of 2010, with its removal of the cap of fees, and its emphasis on higher education as a marketplace and the student as consumer, is seen by many as the culmination of a trajectory of marketization. Opposed to the post-war consensus about higher education's role in society, the current period juxtaposes those that argue for higher education's vocational, entrepreneurial or role as the driver fro innovation one the one hand, versus those that critique the university as becoming corporate and a form of academic capitalism. xlix The development of strategic institutional, economic and spatial links between universities, industry and business partakes of the shifts in the economy as well as the changes in the nature of higher education described above. Claire Melhuish has described the recent trends of the role universities play in urban regeneration, and she argues that the development of King Cross, with Central Saint Martins as one of its cultural anchors epitomises this trend. l Physical and programmatic connections with the wider city and the local community are their physical manifestation, with corresponding design strategies focussing on connectivity, permeability and accessibility.
The shift towards a knowledge-driven economy is also understood to be the context for a driving demand for a more qualified, highly skilled, creative and flexible workforce and corresponding changes in pedagogies. There is less emphasis on factual knowledge, and more on the ability to think critically and solve complex problems. li The impact of information technology, and the size and composition of the student population further propelled new learning methodssocial learning, blended and group learning has gained much stronger emphasis, resulting in a new definition of social learning spaces. lii The learning commons emerged in the 1990s as a technology rich flexible social learning space, but since then the concept of a flexible learning landscape has extended its principle and permeated almost the entirety of campus space bar dedicated and specialized teaching spaces. liii Its premise as a space for collaboration, inquiry, imagination has been transposed into workspaces and other institutions of knowledge alike. liv Social learning spaces, office landscapes, atria and foyers now serve the emphasis on multi-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary and collaborative teaching, learning, research and work pattern. These key voids also play a part in the university's brand, addressing the increasing competition -for students, staff and resources. Melhuish also notes an economic context, in that social informal learning spaces with their emphasis on self-directed learning counterbalance staff-student contact time, tend to be developed at the expense of teaching spaces, but also respond to social needs of students in the face of increasing size and anonymity of universities. lv

Central St Martins' Layers
The Curtis's supposition that Lasdun's project acts as a 'map of (new) social relationships' are perhaps too instrumental in their faith that a direct transposition of social content and form can be achieved. Instead we might draw upon Lasdun's own statements, wherein formal configurations are supposed to, 'seek to promote and extend human relationships'. His collective spaces can be 'spaces for gathering', but are also 'valuable in themselves' because his new urban ground level provides opportunities for a distributed set of 'intensities' to exist side by side -nodes which at times provide 'only' visual interest, thereby helping to draw movement across the urban realm; at other times spatial or programmatic intensities allow for a deliberate intersection with the general public; at still other times more temporary and casual urban associations of interests are promoted. The complex layering in plan and section as shown in Central St. Martin delivered multiple, layered possibilities of occupation; shared spaces and services; with a potential to multiply connections to industry or shared resources for the surrounding community. While this might not have been Martin and Dannatt's objective, the potential for this dispersal of intensities, activated by type, was already inscribed in their UoL court as generator.
These typological principles, have the capacity to complicate, multiply and engender changing occupations of urban space; helping to forge temporary or more long term communities of association, of learning, of knowledge sharing or other forms of communality and association. In other words, they can help to promote a changing, flexible ecology of urban coexistence.
The current urban landscape of learning, knowledge and innovation is also linked to concerns about increasing polarisation between those who belong to the knowledge economy and those who don't; about the increasing privatisation of public space and the current role of the university and its relation to a liberal market economy.
Although outside the scope of this paper, the described typological trajectory gives cause to reflect on both the evolving status of the knowledge economy -its perceived 'good' for society and the cityand, reciprocally, of the status of the 'citizenry' required to substantiate its creative objectives.
While the dynamism between the university and the city is complex, and the corresponding urban development subject to a multitude of different drivers, charting the spatial trajectory from the ivory tower to an urban landscape of learning, knowledge and innovation has shown an immanence to the spatial specificity of typological organisation and typo-morphological transformation. We agree with Martin that reflections on urban areas always already require a problematisation through the built form of an urban area. Here typological reasoning is deployed to probe the potential of an area as the basis for discussion and decision-making. Formulated differently, it asks 'what is the city?

Acknowledgements
With thanks for the support received from the RIBA Drawing Archive, The University of London Archive, and the CSM Press Office.  London, 2009(London, NESTA, 2009 iii NESTA, Innovation in the City, NESTA Report (London, NESTA, 2007)