Smithsons Trail



A map of, and essay about, the buildings Alison and Peter Smithson designed at the University of Bath. Commissioned by Edge Arts.



From 1978 onwards the Smithson’s realised five built environments on campus and Peter Smithson taught architecture students within the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering.



Although the Smithsons’ Brutalist style is quite unlike the Palladian architecture of Bath, they took enormous inspiration from the built heritage of Bath, sharing design aspirations for cohesion, organisation and enjoyment in habitation. They saw their additions as ‘mat building’, stating that the campus was like a fabric laying on the sloping landscape of the hillside. The Smithson’s wanted to understand and complement that existing fabric and ‘weave onto its edges several terminating fringes’.



Visitors can use the map to tour these key buildings and campus locations in order to better understand the Smithson's work and legacy.