Laing O’Rourke has handed over a £200m science building to Imperial College London. The Translation & Innovation Hub will be located on the college’s 25-acre White City Campus in West London.
The new site houses laboratories, incubator and accelerator space as well as flexible office space, and will provide a place for corporate partners, fast-growth companies, spin-outs, start-ups and entrepreneurs to work alongside Imperial academics to grow ideas and translate cutting-edge research into commercial applications.
Fit-out works are also due to start shortly on the chemistry department’s Molecular Sciences Research Hub at the campus, while construction works are to begin on the Michael Uren Biomedical Engineering Research Hub.
Additional works are already underway on a residential tower to provide 192 apartments, with plans afoot for the rest of the campus to include further hubs for academic research, education and translation, community and commercial facilities, and housing.
Imperial College ThinkSpace chief executive Eulian Roberts said: “The handover of the hub marks the next exciting step in the development of the College’s White City Campus. The Campus will be a centre for multidisciplinary research and innovation to help tackle some of the world’s most critical health, natural sciences, engineering and data challenges. By bringing together businesses, entrepreneurs, academics and students, the Campus will create a new networked environment that will drive successful collaboration and experimentation.”
The handover comes just three weeks after we handed over the recently completed £650m Francis Crick Institute in Kings Cross, where over 1,000 scientists will undertake biomedical research.
