ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Let's get creative Leeds students benefit from fantastic £80m creative arts building
L
eading engineering specialist, SES Engineering Services (SES), has announced the completion of MEP works on the impressive Creative Arts building in Leeds City Centre, which has a development value of £80m. The building forms part of a £200m five-year masterplan for the university that will ultimately deliver major infrastructure improvements and provide state-of-the-art facilities for its students, colleagues and partners. Located at the edge of the Civic Quarter of Leeds, the building occupies a prominent site 10 minutes’ walk from the main cultural and retail amenities of the city centre. It was designed by architects
22 | Summer 2021 | CAMPUS
Hawkins\Brown and built by the university’s development partner, George Downing Construction (GDC), with SES providing MEP support. As the flagship development in the new Innovation District in the city, the Creative Arts building is sited on Portland Way, opposite the Rose Bowl – the university’s Business School - and has been designed as a hub for creative and innovative education. The Innovation District is a partnership between Leeds Beckett University, the University of Leeds, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Leeds City Council. The partnership aims to attract new research facilities and drive economic development and
regeneration. It will provide a range of quality workspaces, create new development opportunities and provide upmarket housing to attract and retain skilled workers in the city. The Creative Arts building is the first new development of the £200m investment programme planned over the next five years. It is also the final phase of Downing’s £100m transformation of the once vacant wider site into the distinctive City Village campus living environment. The brief Leeds Beckett University required a new home for academic, creative and cultural activities in the civic heart of Leeds - a building that would bring together students from the Northern
