The Vision for the Business School Building

This will provide a learning space which is open, transparent andinnovative with a clearly vocational orientation and where learning and teaching is visible to all. Technology will be leading edge and underpin the curriculum. The building will be a supportive environment where students and clients want to dwell. It must be welcoming and yet professional i.e. it cannot be uninviting or intimidating. The building itself should provoke thought. Students will feel it’s their intellectual and professional home and will take pride in their association with it, the School and the University. It also needs to serve as the international hub for the business school and so be connected through technology with its international partners and clients.

Descriptions of the building include: sticky, buzzy, community, aspirational, inspiring, leading edge

The particular features which we wish to encapsulate within the building include:

Flexible learning spaces (in which students are taught but also where students study)
The formal and informal learning spaces bleed into each other and are not separated
Informal learning spaces permit a variety of approaches to take place (group discussion, private concentration, and can be IT supported, etc.)
Identifiable areas which mirror subject (e.g.flexible IT labs (possible pop up screens to connect with student tablets – advice needed on IT configuration), accounting versus marketing areas, innovation and creativity areas)
The building progresses through levels: undergraduate through postgraduate to executive education where higher levels are visible and aspirational.
Postgraduate areas which are identifiably so but create the 6th form versus earlier years school differential (i.e.tangibly different without denigration of the UG learning spaces)
CPD and exec ed suite need to have a different feel - it is not for general student use and should have a professional conferencing, high specification environment and facilities –IT, refreshment areas, social space private work space as well as a variety of flexible conference rooms)
Student and school offices (SHaW and UWBS) at the heart of the building but linking with MN and close to the café so academic and administrative staff still meet
A café/eatery which encourages people to come in with no other purpose in mind but which can be used as a venuee.g. for buffets when there are events, as required. It must not have the feel of a “canteen” / supermarket café but be a venue in its own right. Quality vend should be available elsewhere to support informal learning
The building must be comfortable (drafts, lighting, sun on windows issues must be considered and countered)
Sound must not travel (social learning spaces with formal learning spaces or classroom to classroom)
Some specialist features will be required e.g. qualitative research teaching room; IT labs (or equivalent, for teaching which uses particular specialist IT packages in particular); micro offices for group work, consultancy, student interviews with staff or private study; video conferencing facilities; and inter-room video linkages
Access should be 8am-9pm and weekend (with facilities to support this)
One reception (with a wall of patrons to indicate business support)
Research students should be accommodated within the building
Artwork should form part of the building – an iconic sculpture for instance