‘Gigantic spaceship’: University of Bristol’s flagship £500m campus opens | Bristol

Not so long ago, the first impression for visitors arriving by train to Bristol’s main railway station was a derelict building described by David Cameron as looking like the entrance to a war zone.

On Monday, a shiny new University of Bristol campus on the site of that crumbling Royal Mail sorting office next door to Temple Meads is opening its doors to students, teachers and members of the public.

The proximity of the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC) to the station should make it easier for students and staff who cannot afford Bristol’s expensive property and rental market to commute, and for business and research partners from all across the country to attend meetings.

The campus is also designed to be “porous”, with many areas completely open to the public, turning it into a front door to the university for Bristolians in a way that its grand buildings high on the hill in the leafy Clifton area never have been.

The £500m campus is a major part of one of the UK’s biggest regeneration schemes, Bristol Temple Quarter, which is to bring thousands of new homes, work spaces and health and education centres to one of the city’s – and England’s – most deprived neighbourhoods. The scheme is so important to Labour locally and nationally that it got a mention in Andy Burnham’s first prime minister’s questions.

Speaking in a garden space in TQEC almost directly above Temple Meads’ platform 15, Judith Squires, deputy vice chancellor and university lead for the TQEC, said the new site put the university “front and centre” in the city.

“We think it opens up lots of opportunities that we haven’t yet explored,” she said. “One of them will be for students who commute to Bristol, which I think may become an increasingly important trend given that rent is such an expensive cost. Living at home is becoming an increasing option for students.

“It also means that it’s very accessible for a lot of our staff who can commute in, but also for our industrial partners who will be coming to do research and collaboration in the building.”

The site will be a hub for teaching and research across areas including business, innovation, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced telecommunications and quantum technologies.

It features a rare example of a circular lecture theatre. When the Guardian visited, an actor and voice coach from Bristol Old Vic theatre was showing lecturers how to best use the space.

But the university is keen to emphasise that it is is not just for academic types to use, but for all of Bristol’s citizens.

A new entrance from the station to the campus has been created, and new footpaths and cycleways added.

Spaces aimed at citizens include the Bristol Rooms and the Story Exchange on the ground floor, which are designed to bring academics and students together with business, public sector and community organisations.

Sessions on topics important to Bristolians, such as health inequalities, reparative justice and the climate crisis, have already been organised.

Members of the public are to be allowed more casual access to the campus. They will be able to have a coffee on the campus, plug in a laptop and work or use it as a meeting spot.

Squires said: “We wanted to make it a porous place so that people can feel it is a space for them, designed with them in mind. It’s really great to have such an accessible front door to the university where everybody can find it, so we don’t feel so cut off from the city. I think it positions us physically and symbolically in a different way with the city.”

The main building has cost £241m and is named the Sloane Robinson building, after a foundation set up by the former Bristol University student and hedge fund manager Hugh Sloane, which donated £20m.

The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) has invested £35m into the campus and £25m into the station entrance and new paths.

The university has snapped up other parcels of land nearby so it can expand the campus in the coming years, taking the cost of the campus up to £500m.

Behind the Sloane Robinson building, work on the wider Bristol Temple Quarter project is under way in the St Philip’s Marsh area of the city, currently a place of factories, waste disposal sites and Bristol’s fruit market.

Though the new quarter will be 30 years in the making, workers in hi-vis are preparing the way for new homes, shops, community spaces. A bridge is to be built from TQEC to link to it.

Helen Godwin, the mayor of the West of England, said the opening of the campus was a major milestone for Bristol. “Our investment in Bristol Temple Quarter will unlock a giant leap forward for the West of England,” she said.

Martin Booth, editor of the independent magazine and website Bristol 24/7 and author of 111 Places That You Shouldn’t Miss in Bristol, said the new site looked as if a “gigantic spaceship” had crash-landed next to the station. “But it is a manifestation of the university’s efforts to be a more visible part of our city – not just in their privileged position on top of a hill in Clifton,” he said.