The Urban Sciences Building is a £58 million ‘living lab’ located on the Newcastle Helix development. Completed in 2017, the Urban Sciences Building was opened in 2018 by Matt Hancock former MP and Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. 

The Urban Sciences Building is home to Newcastle University School of Computing Science, one of the world’s leading schools of computing. It also home to Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability (NIReS).  

An ‘intelligent building’ with 4,000 in-built censors providing data about its performance, the Urban Sciences Building is one of the most monitored and high-performance buildings in the country. 

It is the central hub of the UK’s first Urban Observatory which collects data from across the city about energy use, rainfall, flooding, air pollution (and even tweets!) to enable evidence-based decisions to be made about the future development and management of our cities. 

The building’s unique design has won it the Collaborative Built Environment Award and Digital Project of the Year Award. 

Learn about the Urban Sciences Building’s Virtual Opening on the University Website.

Sources

Newcastle helix (no date) Urban Sciences Building.  Available at: https://newcastlehelix.com/about/urban-sciences-building

Newcastle University Press Office (2021) Urban Sciences Building takes shape on Science Central. Available at: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2015/12/urbansciencesbuildingtakesshape/

Newcastle University Press Office (2021) Virtual opening for award winning Urban Sciences Building. Available at: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2018/06/usbopening/

Want to learn more about the history of Newcastle University campus? Why not explore all the articles in our Campus Tour blog series.