TheInformatics Forum is a major building on the Central Area campus of theUniversity of Edinburgh. Completed in 2008, it houses the research institutes of the university'sSchool of Informatics.
The Forum is designed byBennetts Associates[1] withReiach and Hall, architects, andBuro Happold, engineers. The architects' brief was to provide a "forum for interaction" that will foster synergies among the 500 researchers inInformatics:Artificial Intelligence,Cognitive Science,Computer Science, andSystems Biology, who have been brought together, under one roof, by this development.
The building was the first in Scotland to achieve aBREEAM rating of "excellent",[2] and was constructed byBalfour Beatty.[3]
One of the major recommendations of the 1997 international review that led to the formation ofInformatics as an academic grouping at Edinburgh, was that the university should provide a building for the collocation of Informatics.[4] An options appraisal recommended that the university should plan for the collocation of Informatics in a new construction within the university's George Square Campus, using the long-vacant Crichton Street site.
In 2002, the university embarked on a fund-raising campaign. This was followed closely by theEdinburgh Cowgate Fire of December 2002,[5] which destroyed a number of buildings, including some of the school's accommodation at 80 South Bridge.[6] The school took over four floors of theAppleton Tower as emergency accommodation.[7] In the following years, plans for the school's accommodation were revised to include six floors of theAppleton Tower, and a new building on the Crichton Street Site.
In all, £42M was raised from public and philanthropic sources.[8] Planning approval was confirmed on 12 September 2005, and work on site commenced in October 2005. The Informatics Forum was opened by thenFirst MinisterAlex Salmond in September 2008.[3][4]
The Forum is the first phase of thePotterrow Project, the redevelopment of a site, bordered by Potterrow, Crichton Street, Charles Street and Marshall Street, that was cleared for redevelopment by the university in 1963, and has been used as a car park ever since. The Potterrow Project is itself part of a more extensive masterplan, that will see the Potterrow underpass removed and the campus extended to link Old College to George Square.[9]
The Informatics Forum, as part of the wider Potterrow development, was joint winner of theRIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award in 2008.[1][10]
55°56′41″N3°11′14.5″W / 55.94472°N 3.187361°W /55.94472; -3.187361
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