Mace, the international construction and consultancy firm, has completed UCL’s flagship Marshgate building, part of the first phase of UCL’s new campus at East Bank on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Marshgate is UCL’s single largest building to date providing over 35,000sqm of cross-disciplinary teaching, research and learning spaces over eight floors.
Designed by architects Stanton Williams to provide new spaces for collaborative thinking, Marshgate unites activities across the arts, technology and science under one roof. Enabling students and staff to immerse themselves in innovative activities and cutting edge research.
The floors are clustered into a series of ‘neighbourhoods’, each with its own double-height collaboration space to encourage cross-disciplinary knowledge share.
The lower levels of the building include a network of publicly accessible spaces, with a café, exhibitions, art programmes, and activities, designed to draw the public into the heart of the building.
The building creates a key interface with the wider Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park community. Its publicly accessible lower floors feature a curated programme of art and activities, including works by local artists, and landscaped outdoor settings providing a newly animated and accessible public realm.
During construction Mace partnered with the UCL Plastics Waste Innovation Hub to replace all single-use plastics with fully reusable modular hoarding panels, recognised by LLDC as the new standard for all hoarding across Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Reflecting UCL’s overarching mission to embed sustainability through its campus and culture, durability and energy efficiency were central to the design approach. The BREEAM Excellent-rated building is powered in part by renewable electricity, with the aim to reach net zero carbon by 2035 in keeping with the district’s wider sustainable energy strategy.
Terry Spraggett, MD Public Sector Construction, Mace said: “Together with UCL, the project team and our supply chain partners’ we’ve delivered an outstanding building. We are immensely proud to be part of this journey. Marshgate is exceptional in its vision – championing collaboration not just between the students and academics but including the wider public. Working closely with the community has been key for us to ensure we create long-term social value for the wider campus. I can’t wait to see Marshgate open and all the great ideas and innovations come to life.’’
Professor Paola Lettieri, Director, UCL East, said: “The issues facing people and the planet have never been more complex or more urgent. The increased scale and space that UCL East will give us, on a campus where departments and faculties are all coming together to problem-solve under the same roof, will accelerate breakthroughs and the disruptive discoveries UCL is known for around the world.”
Gavin Henderson, Principal Director, Stanton Williams, said: “Drawing on the legacy of Lee Valley's industriousness and creativity, and the exceptional cultural and landscape setting of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Marshgate will be a place of curiosity, learning and collaboration. A place that engages with the surrounding city to create a new kind of university quarter, and that balances a sense of permanence with a designed in flexibility that will both facilitate and embrace the rapidly evolving nature of academic practice.”
