A significant milestone in the construction of a £30million Nottingham bioscience building – co-funded by the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) – will be marked tomorrow (Friday April 29).
Innovative designs for a unique solar installation to feature on the building will also be unveiled.
Developers, contractors and council leaders will gather to celebrate the final concrete being poured to create the state-of-the-art bioscience ‘incubator’ building, overlooking Lower Parliament Street; an expansion of the highly successful BioCity Nottingham complex. The five-storey building will support more than 700 new bioscience roles in the city over the next 30 years and cement Nottingham’s position as the UK’s fastest growing life sciences community.
An integral feature of the building design will be a sunscreen, known as a ‘Brise Soleil’ which reduces the risk of the building overheating. It will also help make the building more energy efficient by minimising the need for air conditioning.
Innovative designs for the Brise Soleil will be revealed at tomorrow’s event by acclaimed local artist Wolfgang Buttress, in partnership with physicist Dr Martin Bencsik of Nottingham Trent University. The installation, known as Corona, will link the building with solar flares measured by NASA satellites, feeding signals to an integrated lighting system, to provide a stunning entrance to the eastside of the city.
The sculpture will form a curtain of aluminium tubes 17 metres high across the front of the building, embedded with fibre-optic lights which respond to signals from NASA satellites.
The bioscience building expansion is being delivered by a number of local partners under the Scape framework. The site was bought, cleared and decontaminated by Nottingham City Council, and the project has been funded by the City Council, and with £6.5m from the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership’s £192million Local Growth Fund allocation. The private sector-led LEP is a partnership of business, local authorities, skills and training providers, and community and voluntary organisations which works to grow the economy and create jobs across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. Life sciences is one of its eight key economic sectors.
Other partners on the biosciences project are contractor Willmott Dixon, Nottingham architects CPMG, Notts-based consulting engineers Morgan Tucker, construction consultancy Gleeds, multi-disciplinary practitioner Pick Everard and electrical engineers Couch Perry Wilkes.
The facility will be operated by BioCity on behalf of the Council when completed in spring 2017.
Councillor Jon Collins, Leader for Nottingham City Council and Portfolio Holder for Strategic Regeneration, said: “This building recognises the importance of bioscience to our local economy and, just as the first BioCity building has done so successfully, it will provide fledgling companies and the next generation of entrepreneurs the chance to grow and expand by making use of a range of high-tech chemistry and biology laboratories.”
Peter Richardson, Chairman of the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership, added: “Excellent progress has been made on the new BioCity Nottingham site and, once it is complete next year, the innovative ‘Brise Soleil’ sunscreen will really make the facility stand out.
“Equally this major project, aided by a £6.5m grant from the D2N2 LEP, will make our area stand out as a UK leader in growing the life sciences sector.”
Dr Glenn Crocker, Chief Executive at BioCity, said: “This is a significant moment, not just for BioCity and the companies based here, but for Nottingham. BioCity is extending its reach across the UK but it is particularly satisfying that we are still growing here in Nottingham, where the BioCity story began.”
Media and invited guests will attend a short ‘topping out’ ceremony at the site tomorrow and the unveiling of the Brise Soleil designs.
For more information on how D2N2 is supporting life sciences and its other key sectors see its website at www.d2n2lep.org/Key-Sectors
Media wanting more information on tomorrow’s event can contact Stephan Richeux, Nottingham City Council Media Manager, on 0115 876 3309 or email: Stephan.richeux@nottinghamcity.gov.uk .
The media contact for information on the D2N2 LEP is D2N2 Communications Manager Sean Kirby, on 0115 9578749 or email: sean.kirby@d2n2lep.org
