A new £10.5 million Student Centre has opened at Bournemouth University’s Talbot Campus.
The six-storey building contains a range of social and collaborative learning space – including beach hut techno-booths – and bookable meeting rooms, as well as catering facilities and access points for student services.
It is also the new home of the Students’ Union at Bournemouth University (SUBU) – containing the SUBU offices, student advice centre and activities hub, and new radio studios and space for Nerve* student media.
Jim Andrews, BU Chief Operating Officer, said: “We’ve spent the best part of the last 18 months developing this building and engaging with students around what needs to go in here. It’s just really exciting now for everybody to be able to come through the doors and have a look around.
“It offers students a number of things – there are more café points, more meeting points, and greater access to our amazing students’ union – who are much more visible here than they were in the small offices that they’ve had in the past.”
The building is primarily designed as a hub for students to meet informally for study-related activities, for clubs and societies, and for social purposes.
It also features a glazed walkway providing direct access to the library, and windows which look out onto the SportBU sports hall.
SUBU President Chloe Schendel-Wilson said: “It’s really nice and it’s so exciting.
“It’s a really good way for BU to show students that there’s somewhere they can just hang out and treat like their own.
“It has also made SUBU more visible and accessible, so it is much easier to approach us and easier when you’re walking around to see what’s going on and get involved.”
The Student Centre is the first entirely new building on Talbot Campus for ten years, and is the most carbon efficient building on campus, with a number of green credentials to enable it to achieve a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating.
Jim Andrews said: “We’ve done lots of work over the last few years internally within different buildings, but this is the first new build for ten years.
“I think for me what it does is it sets a new standard for how we want the space to look and feel across Bournemouth University.”
Work is currently underway to create a new academic building on Talbot Campus, due to open in September 2016, and the Bournemouth University International College in Lansdowne – a partnership with Kaplan International to provide an integrated experience for international students undertaking preparatory programmes.
The Student Centre is open from 8am until 10pm daily, including all weekends other than the university’s Christmas closure.
