Planning permission granted for Chancellor's Building

Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Planning permission granted for ChancellorÔÇÖs Building

ArchitectÔÇÖs impression of the ChancellorÔÇÖs Building.

Planning permission for the Chancellor’s Building has been granted by Reading Borough Council.

The Chancellor’s Building will provide a temporary teaching space for students during large-scale refurbishment works, and is anticipated to be in use by January 2017. It will be located on the site of the recently demolished Rural History Centre on Chancellor’s Way.

Now that full permission has been obtained, main construction works will begin this summer following the completion of the current programme of early works. The building will be created from modular units, which will make construction relatively swift and simple.

Spanning two floor, the Chancellor’s Building will include 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), as part of the refurbishment of the URS Building. The School is set to move during the December holidays in time for the start of the 2017 spring term.

The temporary space will have a lifespan of 5 years.