Most building were very poor, there hadn’t been a lot of investment put into a lot of
the older buildings. The original University dates back to 1964,
so the 1964 building was pretty much as it was, which was quite poor.
The other buildings came afterwards 70s and 80s, which were not in such a bad way but
nether less they remained as they were when they were built and they just needed bringing
out and putting into a modern context. First thing is about providing space that
people would want to use and providing that space in an economical way.
So the University didn’t have lashing of money that it could just throw at stuff,
so the projects that we picked were cherry picked to give the best bang for the buck
as they say. First impressions are really important so
on Open Days when a student comes, if they came and were greeted with something that
was scruffy and not really very practical and didn’t do what they wanted it to do
and didn’t have its sports or its social space etc, then it might detract from their choice.
In 2006, 5/6, when we first did the Estates Strategy,
we used to do a questionnaire to students who were offered a place but didn’t
take it and at that time 28% of students said they didn’t come because they didn’t like
the estate, the infrastructure was horrible. We did it again in 2010/11 and it had gone
down to 8% So the University was obviously doing something right.
Environmentally I would say we are sector
leaders, we’re a beacon. The Ecoversity programme that we’ve developed is now hardly
talked about because it’s just embedded we do it, we just do it.
The re:centre it started off as a sustainable building as a demonstrator for schools, which
it still is, but it also went a bit further and is now an incubator for sustainable incubators
basically. Businesses that are associated with sustainable
design, practices, innovation and it’s been very successful.
The actual construction of it from a building point of view, it’s fairly, not fairly,
it’s unique in the world. There isn’t a hemp building of that size
anywhere, that’s the only one. The really good thing about it is most buildings
when you build them give off carbon, this particular building that we have actually
takes carbon out of the atmosphere as it dry’s so it captures up carbon.
The vision that we have is based around the new corporate strategy for the University,
which is growing student numbers so that translates into an estate growth of about 42,000 metres,
which is not inconsiderable. It would have been very easy just to plonk
buildings on carparks and grounds around the University
Well we came up with a solution of actually building on top of existing buildings.
We’ve checked the structural integrity of them so its do able, the practicality of it
is hard but it is do able and what it means is that you can get a density of the University
in to an existing built of state. There is one new building which is a sizeable
building its about 10/12/14000 square metres which would be on the front of Richmond building,
a new learning portal curved building, absolutely iconic right in the middle of the University,
make a massive difference. So if you can do all of that, the total cost
we worked out £300m /£350m, does include some student accommodation, does include sports
provision, does include lots of social learning and social space and also this type of teaching
space which i'm talking about which is very flexible and not your average learning lecture room.