UCL East - Progress update

In April 2015, UCL entered into a partnership with the London Legacy Development (LLDC) to deliver UCL East, a new campus on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP). 

Following an announcement in the December 2014 Autumn Statement of the Government's financial support for the wider Olympicopolis project of which UCL is a significant component and the approval of UCL Council, UCL has entered into partnership with the LLDC to deliver UCL East. 

Over the next 18 months, UCL will work with the LLDC to develop a masterplan and building designs for the site. Once the Government approves the final business case for Olympicopolis and UCL Council has given its own final approval, construction of UCL East will commence, with a target first opening during the 2019/20 Academic Year.

A masterplanning team has now been appointed and is working with UCL Estates, colleagues across UCL and at the LLDC to design a world-class masterplan for the sites selected on QEOP.

All UCL staff and students are welcome to meet members of the masterplanning team at the Wilkins Main Quad on Wednesday 10 June to find out more about the project and how to get involved in the consultation process. Design teams for the buildings determined through the masterplanning process are scheduled to be appointed in early 2016.

Initially, UCL East will focus on the development of 50,000sqm into facilities for cross-disciplinary academic research and for student and staff accommodation. Plans for these facilities are now being progressed through Academic and Infrastructure Programme Boards as part of the bespoke governance structure.

A key tenet of the masterplan design (and, in time, for the building designs) is ensuring that the spaces created are as inherently flexible, adaptable and sustainable as possible. We need to provide high-quality generic space that, much like some of the UCL buildings at Bloomsbury, can be re-fitted in the coming decades and beyond to accommodate uses that cannot be envisaged today. 

Spaces for the first phase academic plans that crystallise over the next year - some of which will by necessity be relatively bespoke - will be provided for within the building fit-out specifications determined during 2017.   

A Campus Concept Group chaired by Professor Alan Penn, Dean of The Bartlett, has been established to ensure the masterplan for the UCL East campus upholds and delivers the vision of UCL 2034, the university's 20-year strategy.

In addition, an Academic Challenge Panel, jointly chaired by Professor Yvonne Rydin, Bartlett School of Planning, and Dr Ben Campkin, Bartlett School of Architecture and UCL Urban Laboratory, has been established as a forum for UCL colleagues with particular interests and expertise in areas related to UCL East, to contribute toward its development - informing, advising and influencing the masterplanning, design and delivery. It is intended that the make-up of this panel, drawing on a broad cross-section of UCL expertise, will alter over time as the UCL East project develops, in order to ensure input from relevant disciplines at appropriate stages.

Adam Harman
Project Director, UCL East