Everyone will be aware of the amount of capital development taking place on campus at the moment. Jessop West (opposite the Information Commons) is taking shape and will house the departments of English, History and SOMLAL (School of Modern Languages an Linguistics). The Victorian wing of Jessops is being refurbished and Music will move in there. In addition, the Soundhouse is being constructed on the site of the old Gell Street porters building as practice rooms and sound studios for Music – it’s an amazing design, clad in rubber (see pic).I’m on the PEG (Project Executive Group) for a building which is being considered – not given final approval yet - but initial plans are being drawn up. This is The Learning Hub – intended to provide teaching space, a skills centre and an executive education suite. This afternoon’s PEG was particularly exciting as it was the first time the architect revealed some outline plans and sketches for the building. The architects are RMJM who designed the Information Commons, and I was taken back about 4 years today to IC PEGs as Colin Moses from RMJM went through his presentation and revealed their latest thinking. The building will contain a variety of different teaching spaces, open access IT areas, state of the art AV facilities, as well as self help skills areas currently housed in MLTC and ELTC. It will complement the IC but obviously have a different use, and one of the sites being considered is on the opposite side of Favell Road to the IC. CiCS will obviously be heavily involved in the building in terms of managing the AV, IT and teaching spaces. If approval is give, it's planned that the building will open in the middle of 2010.
I'm not here for the next day or two, so look out for another guest blog post tomorrow...
No comments:
Post a Comment