UPFRONT
KEY REGIONAL STRATEGY BENEFITS FROM £3.1M STEM PROJECT IN MIDDLESBROUGH When Middlesbrough College was selected by the Department for Education (DfE) to be a partner in the North East Institute of Technology (IoT) in 2019, this brought with it sole responsibility for delivering IoT-accredited courses in the Tees Valley area.
the massive potential offered W ith by emerging sectors such as digital, biologics and healthcare, significant opportunities continue to emerge for the area and, with these, come the need for a suitablyqualified and skilled workforce. The existing state-of-the-art STEM centre at Middlesbrough College, opened in 2015, was, therefore, ideally placed to facilitate the learning of significant numbers of students with higher level technical skills, crucial to national, regional and local productivity growth. As a result, an extension to the existing building was needed to enable the delivery of further courses.
Location The college is located at the heart of the Tees Valley conurbation. Here, the region’s expertise has been built around its traditional strengths in shipbuilding, engineering, process industries and offshore oil and gas. Increasingly, low-carbon enterprises are flourishing here – an area which has the largest concentration of engineering businesses and employers in the North East.
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The college campus lies within the Middlehaven regeneration area of the town. It is positioned over an infilled dock and the extension sits on a fully-suspended, ground-floor slab supported on piles.
The design brief Designed by further education building design specialist, Bond Bryan Architects of Sheffield, several aspects arose from the consultation process which have influenced the final design. These included: Placement of the new extension and its massing to ensure the entrances of the existing STEM building would be unaffected and the height of the new building continued with the same profile Ensuring that the existing facilities within STEM could be utilised for the new extension yet, at the same time, meet curriculum needs Ensuring that the existing industrial palette established for STEM would reflect continuity.
