Lacking much space for offices within the art school itself, the lecturers from the Slade gather behind the oak doors of UCL’s Housman Room. Huddled round tables crammed between leather sofas and tatty armchairs, the meetings are conducted in the atmosphere of a faded members club.
From 5.30pm onwards the room begins to fill with groups of off-duty astrophysicists, neuroscientists, linguists or sculptors. Each clan have subtly varying codes of dress and manners but after the black holes have been measured, the cognitive pathways traced or the Kazakhi pronouns declined, they are also just people engaging in the ritual of the after work drink.