Chancellor's Building to provide temporary teaching space

Thursday, 12 May 2016

An architectÔÇÖs impression of the finished building.

The University Council has approved an £8.4 million investment for the creation of temporary teaching space during major redevelopment projects.

Over the next few years, the University will be making significant investments into the improvement and redevelopment of our campuses. Key locations, such as the Library and the URS Building, will undergo major transformation to enhance the quality of our facilities and the experience we provide to our students.  

The scale of our plans mean that temporary relocation is unavoidable. By creating purpose-built temporary accommodation, we can  we can ensure that our high standards of teaching and learning can continue in the midst of major construction works. 

Known as the ‘Chancellor’s Building’, the temporary accommodation will provide students and staff with a versatile and stimulating teaching space, packed with specialist equipment and  modern fittings. It will be located on the site of the recently demolished Rural History Centre on Chancellor’s Way, with work anticipated to begin this summer. The temporary space will start to be used in January 2017, and will have a lifespan of 5 years. 

Spanning two floors, the Chancellor’s Building will provide 14 teaching rooms varying from 24 – 150 seats, two teaching/research labs, a PC lab, along with social break out spaces. It will also include more specialist features, including a dedicated resource centre, a new Building Information Modelling (BIM) lounge and an immersive virtual reality ‘CAVE’ that will enable students to interact with 3D digitised environments.

The first occupants of the Chancellor’s Building will be the School of Construction Management and Engineering (SCME). At the end of this year, SCME students and staff located in the URS and Engineering buildings will move over to the temporary accommodation to coincide with the redevelopment of the URS Building. During the refurbishment of the URS Building, teaching rooms that can be booked through our central booking system will be relocated within the Chancellor’s Building. 

The £8.4m investment covers VAT, the demolition of the Rural History Centre, the resurfacing of Chancellor’s Way and the creation of a new footpath. More details of the project, including planned work schedules, will be shared soon.