St Andrews Medical School Building, Fife Education Design Project, Scotland, Photos

St Andrews Medical School Building

New Fife Architecture, east Scotland education facility design by Reiach and Hall Architects

2 Nov 2010

St Andrews Medical School Building News

Design: Reiach and Hall Architects

“The decorum displayed by Reiach and Hall’s medical sciences building for the University of St Andrews harks back to the original values of the modern movement. Ten years ago, at the height of the iconic madness, a building such as this would have been ignorantly dismissed as banal or boring, but today it is the unstructured egotism of erstwhile showpieces as Enric Miralles’s Scottish Parliament, with every detail shrieking for attention, that look like monotonous mountains of kitsch. What they so egregiously lack, and what this building has in plenty, is a sense of architectural decorum, of individuality ennobled within a collective framework.”

Miles Glendinning, The Architects’ Journal, 01.07.10, Volume 232

photo © Andrew Lee

Medical & Biological Sciences Building, University of St Andrews

Designed as a world-leading medical facility to attract students and academics from around the globe, the £33M competition winning new Medical Sciences Building brings together medical science departments to nurture cross-departmental learning and research in a design which places emphasis on social interaction. Shared common areas, break-out spaces, views through, placing the cafe and courtyard at the heart of the plan to create an open social forum, all enliven debate and create a visionary learning and research environment.

The new Medical Sciences Building is located on a prominent site at the entrance to the North Haugh Campus. Addressing masterplanning issues for the campus as a whole, we replaced the existing idea of ‘pavilion’ development by ‘infilling’ the sites between these ‘object’ buildings to repair the disjointed nature of the site.

The pattern that evolved takes up the very beautiful precedent of courts and quads that St Andrews is renowned for. The new building creates a new ‘edge’ and a sequence of courts and quads that people can move through and enjoy. This building strategy resulted in the University changing its choice of site enabling more efficient development and better departmental connections. After 19 months on site the building was handed over in February 2010.

photos © Andrew Lee

The 10,900sqm Medical Sciences building accommodates clinical skills, anatomy and teaching laboratories for medicine, biology and chemistry, medical research facilities, bio photonics department, lecture theatre facilities, offices and café, social and foyer spaces. The primary objective of the design is to bring together teaching and research in the most relevant and up-to-date manner possible to make connections both physically, and in terms of research, to foster interaction and intellectual cross fertilisation amongst academic staff, and also between staff and students not just within the Medical Sciences community but across all disciplines, departments and schools at the University.

The borders between University disciplines continue to become less defined. It is at the edges of disciplines that discovery takes place. The new Medical Sciences Building is a unique multi-disciplinary facility central to deliver this innovation and ambition.

The new Medical Sciences building wholeheartedly embraces energy efficiency, sustainability and environmental responsibility. The building was awarded a BREEAM Excellent rating.

St Andrews Medical School Building images / information from Reiach and Hall Architects

Reiach and Hall

St Andrews Medical School Building : further information

Location: St Andrews, Scotland