Nervous, excited and, for once, forming an orderly queue, art students wait to enrol for the new teaching year. A towering atrium soars above them, and beyond is a golden canyon of light, a skylit central hall or indoor "street", above which float glassy studios and airy bridges. It is all bright, clean, and open – this is definitely not the old Central St Martins.
Of all the London art colleges, Saint Martins has had the most bohemian reputation and, until its old building closed this summer, the most pungent premises. While Goldsmiths might be famous for nurturing Young British Artists of the Damien Hirst vintage, the former Saint Martins premises saw the Sex Pistols play and Jarvis Cocker flirt with a girl who wanted to live like common people.
Of course, it has a noble heritage of fine art as well. Lucian Freud was briefly a student, although the rebellious immigrant youngster did not do well at the college. A plaster Venus that graces the new building and can be spotted in early twentieth century photographs in its archive must have been on view when the greatest British painter of the nude was getting his first lessons in Soho, drinking in the college's louche old neighbourhood.
Everyone from fashion industry scouts (Alexander McQueen was an alumnus) to tourists fascinated by the permanent gaggle of exotic youngsters outside its doors on Charing Cross Road knew this was a characterful institution. Behind those doors lurked a festering warren of studios that some loved and others loathed, but that the college believed was at the end of its life. "It was hell," says Mick Finch, a senior teacher.
Now they have ascended to paradise. The new Central Saint Martins replaces not one but two big buildings, on Southampton Row in Holborn as well as the Soho warren, and will host 600 undergraduates. It has been carved out of a complex of warehouses near King's Cross station, or rather, artfully inserted: a pristine arrangement of cubes and glass invading the industrial brick shell.
The new Saint Martins is a truly spectacular building that fits around the simple, grand skylit spacial heart. The staircases ascending from here lead to equally well-lit work areas with movable wooden walls, where students will share "base areas" from which they can book everything from a towering theatre to a 16mm film editing suite.
An art college is a fascinating architectural challenge. How do you provide the flexible working areas that students require without creating a big art factory? Britain's most beautiful art college is also one of our greatest buildings: Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art. In its generous and creative use of openness and natural light, architect Paul Williams's building shares some of the Glasgow school's panache. It also emulates its authority. The vistas invite contemplation and an awe at your surroundings.
Can this modern cathedral win the hearts of students as the old place did? Will its grandness foster the same creative atmosphere? The students at the gate admit to mixed feelings. They could see the good side of the old bohemian rhapsody. "We're worried that it's lost its charm," says Tuesday Rigby, "but I'm sure that will come with the students."
The nostalgia is shared by Hannah Rickards, who won the Whitechapel Gallery's Max Mara prize in 2009. Rickards studied at Central Saint Martins and now teaches here. Today is her first chance to see the new building, and she is trying to take it in. She too sees the "upside" of the old.
I suspect those memories will fade among the state-of-the-art facilities and epic views, inner and outer, that made me, for one, feel like taking up a sketch pad. There are some antiseptic buildings and less than charismatic studios among London's art schools, but this is not one of them. It has a tremendous sense of architectural occasion, and surely that is good for learning, to feel a drama in your surroundings.
And, as Professor Jane Rapley, head of the college, says: "I'm sure we'll turn this into a warren over the next 25 years."
Punks and painters
Central St Martins College of Art and Design has given the world punks, painters, actors and authors – as well as the odd inventor, designer, film-maker, critic, cook and James Bond.
Artistic alumni include Sir Peter Blake, Frank Auerbach, Gilbert and George, Antony Gormley, Mona Hatoum, Billy Childish and the late Lucian Freud. Musicians include Lionel Bart, Joe Strummer, Sade, MIA, and Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols.
Jarvis Cocker of Pulp immortalised his alma mater in a couplet from Common People: "She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge/She studied sculpture at St Martins College."
Actors and directors are well represented (by the likes of Pierce Brosnan, Simon Callow, Paul Bettany, Colin Firth, Ronni Ancona, John Hurt and Mike Leigh) as are writers (Len Deighton, John Berger and Claudia Roden) and fashion designers (Rifat Ozbek, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Katharine Hamnett, John Galliano, Luella Bartley and Bruce Oldfield).
The college also played a part in the education of inventor and tycoon Sir James Dyson and designer Sir Terence Conran.