A new student hub for collaboration and innovation with a family of diverse, digitally supported spaces in the north-west of England.

The new building is located at the heart of the campus, providing a new destination for students, enhancing existing connections and creating new.
The hub completes a quadrangle of high quality and distinctive red brick buildings, adding to the formal landscape at Hope Park.

The building's character complements the diverse range of spaces made available to students and staff - inside and out - privileging views onto green amenity as an appropriate setting to coming together and learning.

The interior has been conceived around two ideas that give the potential to its users. Firstly by being flexible long term, accommodating unique learning projects and changing needs within the built volume, easily providing open plan or cellular accommodation.

Secondly, by designing spaces which promote serendipitous encounters, specific spaces, nooks and crannies where people can see and be seen; a place at Hope where everyone feels at home in their studies. Materially warm, refreshing and robust the student hub provides an inviting place for collegial work and study.

Light floods into the core of the building; the solar facade, clerestory and oculus enables our approach to exceed minimum BRE daylighting requirements whilst managing glare and solar heat gain. It also enables a natural ventilation strategy in summer and winter to ensure a healthy comfortable indoor environment.

The new student hub has been designed to perform beyond contemporary building standards to achieve LETI values and and BREEAM 'Outstanding'. Through a 'fabric first' approach we prioritised the efficient use of materials, the sequestering of carbon and the production of clean energy.

Design competition. Shortlisted.