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Flagship new university campus opens within major UK regeneration project

After a decade of complex design, engineering and construction work the University of Bristol’s flagship 38,000 square metre Sloane Robinson Building at the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus is complete and opened to students, staff, businesses and communities in September 2026.

International engineering consultancy, design and advisory firm Buro Happold played a central role in the collaborative team that unlocked the vision for this long-unused city centre location. The project unites a series of underdeveloped sites around Bristol’s Floating Harbour to create a world-class, sustainable campus for teaching, research and civic engagement that will serve as a catalyst for the broader major regeneration of Bristol’s Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone and forge closer links between the university, the city and the private sector.

Working closely with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council, and alongside architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and landscape architects Grant Associates, Buro Happold has been involved since the project’s initial masterplan in 2015. The firm provided broad, multidisciplinary support to realise the campus. This spanned building services design, fire engineering, ground and structural engineering, acoustic engineering, specialist lighting design, as well as infrastructure, sustainability and inclusive environments services, to ensure that the building has inclusivity incorporated from the outset.

Claire Smith, Partner at Buro Happold and Project Lead, said: “We’re extremely proud to see this innovative project completed. The site’s former industrial use meant there were significant challenges facing development, however, working collaboratively with partners and across our specialist teams, we overcame the obstacles to transform this fantastic city centre site.”

The Buro Happold team worked with Bristol City Council, the University of Bristol and the Environment Agency to find a solution to the flood risk that had restricted previous regeneration attempts in this area of the city. The Buro Happold team used a combination of GIS and hydraulic modelling to analyse the effect raising the land would have on the flow of water, and on third parties, all the way down the River Avon, from Brislington to Avonmouth.

The site’s history as a vibrant cattle-market, a diesel train depot and, most recently, home to a large postal sorting office posed further challenges. Features of archaeological interest had to be avoided, and oil contamination hotspots had to be remediated. Groundwater was monitored and tested to check for potential industrial contaminants, and the basement and foundations of the previous building were meticulously plotted to thread the new foundation in between.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To support the University of Bristol’s focus on sustainability, the building is built to BREEAM Excellent standard, with energy modelling informing design decisions. The building captures waste heat to provide heating and hot water for the building, with capacity to export waste heat back to the district heating network.

Professor Judith Squires, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Lead for the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus at the University of Bristol, said: “The opening of the Sloane Robinson Building at our Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus represents an exciting new chapter for the University. What began as an ambitious vision is becoming a place where people come together to learn, discover and collaborate, creating lasting impact for Bristol and beyond.”

Mike Keys, Partner, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, added: “Our ambition was to create a university building that feels genuinely part of Bristol: open, welcoming and connected to the life of the city. The architecture is designed around openness and exchange, bringing students, researchers, businesses and local communities together through a series of generous, interconnected spaces. Its transparent façades and visible activity give this previously closed-off site a new civic presence, sparking new connections and helping to shape the next chapter of Temple Quarter.”

From September, the new building has been home to students and staff and provided a dedicated space for industry partners ranging from local SMEs to international companies. It has opened nearby to existing university buildings on Avon Street, Bristol Dental School and The Sheds – a centre of research into digital and creative technologies – into what now forms the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus.

It is also at the centre of Bristol’s Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone, one of the UK’s largest regeneration projects led by Bristol Temple Quarter LLP. Over the course of 25 years, 130 hectares of former industrial land around Temple Meads Station is being transformed to create 10,000 new homes, 22,000 new jobs, and bring an estimated £1.6bn annual income to the city’s economy.

Smith concludes: “It’s exciting to see how the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus is catalysing development across this previously neglected quarter of the city. A number of new, much-needed residential blocks are already rising out of the ground, with more developments going through the planning process.”

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