Lancaster City Council has unanimously approved the construction of a new Engineering building on campus. The building will be constructed on the site of the old Sports Centre, located near the Management School buildings.
The finished building will be four storeys high. According to the proposal submitted to Lancaster City Council, the ground floor will house heavy engineering workshops and laboratory spaces, as well as a service yard and bike stores. The first floor will contain the main workshops, team project areas and meeting rooms. The second floor will contain open plan offices, engineering research laboratories, a breakout space and engineering and electrical laboratories. The third floor will largely consist of academic and open plan offices. The Lancaster Guardian states that car parking arrangements will remain unchanged after the building’s completion.
The application for the new building was submitted by Mark Swindlehurst, Lancaster University’s Director of Facilities, to the Planning and Highways Regulatory Committee of Lancaster City Council. The application was granted on Monday, April the 8th. The demolition of the old Sports Centre, approved previously, is due to be completed in June this year with construction of the new Engineering building to begin this summer. It is predicted to be completed by late 2014.
The demolition of the old Sports Centre was part of the university’s 2007 University Campus Masterplan, which identified areas of the university with value for future academic use.
Lancaster University’s Engineering department has a number of research interests, with a strong research track in wave and tidal energy, as well as an international reputation for research in structures, design and manufacturing. Students from the department have taken part in National Science and Engineering Week and worked with scientists on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.
