Last year UCL launched an independent investigation into bullying and discrimination at the Bartlett, after former student Eleni Kyriacou compiled a dossier of incidents witnessed by current and former students of the architecture school.

The university said at the time it was ‘aware of issues in the [school ...] for some time’ and ‘all too aware that sexist and racist behaviour takes place at UCL’.

Now the Athens-based fashion designer has been told she cannot hire a small room at the RIBA, because the institute did not want to prejudice UCL’s independent investigation.

Kyriacou had agreed a price with the RIBA events team to hire the Soane room – a small boardroom on the second floor of 66 Portland Place – for use as part of a fashion shoot taking place outside the building. The room would have been used for outfit changes, make-up and hair.

The shoot would have featured architecture-inspired clothing from Kyriacou's range Time to Rebuild, which responds to the trauma she and other former Bartlett students and staff members had undergone. She had planned to have to the clothes modelled by other Bartlett alumni.

However, Kyriacou told the AJ that the RIBA would not have been supporting any campaign by hiring out space to her. She said that the abrupt decision to turn down her request to hire the space left her feeling as if whistleblowers or survivors of abuse were not welcome at the institute.

She said: ‘I am disappointed with the RIBA, who, rather than accepting my...

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