Building a better University

Male: Over the past four years we have re-positioned the university to ensure that we are able to move forward in a very positive way in the new environment. As we look forward it's vital that we regenerate our estates and facilities that we look to providing an enhancing and new experience for the students. A major part of that is the considerable investment we are now making in both Harrow and Marylebone. We don’t have enough social spaces, we don’t have enough eating spaces and by doing really good architecture at the centre of all our campuses, I think the student experience is just going to become much richer and actually much more enjoyable.

Female: With Harrow it just means the space is… they’ve got transparent classrooms, a big open space lecture areas and what that means it promotes student talent across our amazing media, arts and design school.

Male: It's exciting because it's new and it's warm and it's light.

Female: I think it's bringing us all together more because it's quite like just one big space instead of two little spaced.

Female: Yeah you're right.

Female: I'm really enjoying it and the light is good. A lot better.

Male: Yeah it's much better.

Female: It's great, I love it up here.

Male: It's bigger.

Female:  I got more space here like to do my work.

Male: All of this which is currently in the street, will be protected from the elements and completely covered over in the way that we form this in the new project.

Female: All our activities are going to be visible and that will make a very exciting environment for people.

Male: To try and find the best solutions which give the campus kind of long-term flexibility, understanding how the university market might change in the future.

Female: It will be the building that will help us to do what we've always wanted to do which is encourage students to work together, to collaborate, to appreciate each other. To do all the things they're going to have to do when they leave us and enter the creative industries and the building is going to make that so possible for us.

Male: Well here at Marylebone students have been saying to us for a long time that we need to really improve the facilities and provide a sense of character right in the heart of this very very busy campus. Two schools are located here, the School of Architecture in a Built Environment and the Westminster Business School and it's a real hub of activity. We are bringing a new sense of community to the very centre of this location by roofing over the old podium which has been very windswept and rained upon for just too long.

Male: One space is going to enhance the way people learn. It's going to be a flexible space that allows people to learn in their own way.

Male: I think to have a heart in the centre of the campus is going to be incredibly important to the way that people use the campus, see the campus and also see the university as not just somewhere they come in for a quick lecture and then go away. But as somewhere where they can sit with their friends, sit with their tutors and have an extended feeling of belonging to the university.

Female: It just means that students don’t just go home, they get to enjoy the space, use the space and celebrate in the space.

Male: Here at Little Titchfield Street we’re creating a number of improvements around the building and principally in the space behind me, we're creating a new 380 seat lecture theatre. This will be a facility made available for all four of the universities schools located in the West End and will be ready for September 2013.

Male: I think what we're doing at Westminster is actually jumping ahead of the game, particularly through the central spaces, in concentrating not just on teaching accommodation, which is clearly important, but all the other aspects of university life.

Male: There's going to be that sense of pride towards... my university has invested in its students.

Male: What's really important about these developments is how we're focusing on trying to build a sense of community through the new spaces.

Male: So I ask you to be patient and to help us as we move through the next two years. I assure you the outcome will be really worth it.