Life science schemes in Oxford by Aukett Swanke and Purcell were also given the go-ahead.
Yesterday (19 September) Hawkins\Brown won planning for a £100 million life sciences masterplan in Cambridge, which will include seven buildings on a 24ha brownfield and former landfill site straddling a railway line south of Cambridge City Airport.
The Coldhams Lane scheme, for developer Mission Street, will provide 90,000m² of research workspace, ‘catering to companies throughout their growth journey, from start-up to large multinational’.
Source:Secchi Smith/Hawkins\Brown
The development will be fully pedestrianised with a public central square and will include a 27,000m² transport hub, an 880m² café and corporate event space designed to evoke the area’s agricultural and industrial past, as well as fitness infrastructure and playspace.
Cambridge planning committee approved a hybrid planning application for the project, granting detailed consent for the first three of the proposed buildings, and outline consent for the remaining.
The decision came two days after Hawkins\Brown received permission for a separate life sciences project in Oxford, at a planning meeting on Tuesday (17 September) in which three major life sciences projects for the city were all unanimously approved.
Hawkins\Brown’s Oxford project for Advanced Research Clusters (ARC) will deliver an eight-storey building on a vacant 1.13ha grassy site in a 35ha business park, ARC Oxford, formerly known as Oxford Business Park and mostly owned by ARC.
The design aims to create a new benchmark for design quality in the park, breaking away from the existing two-storey 90s and 2000s office blocks in line with ARC’s ambition to ‘reprogramme’ the business park into an ‘innovation campus’. The project falls within a pre-existing ARC outline planning permission for the wider site.
Source:Hawkins\Brown (taken from planning documents)
Hawkins\Brown’s life sciences project for Oxford – approved September 24
A five-storey lab-enabled office building designed by Aukett Swanke was also approved for the ARC Oxford business park on Tuesday.
The 11,600m² project will demolish and replace a vacant office building on a 1.1ha site in John Smith Drive.
The new building will include a double-height entrance hall leading on to a new garden space, a landscaped pedestrian and cyclist route connecting the once-operational Cowley Branch Line to the business park, and a saw-tooth roof with rooftop amenity space as a nod to the area’s industrial heritage.
In a design and access statement, Aukett Swanke said the building will provide a ratio of 70:30 lab to office provision, using ‘plug and play’ infrastructure suitable ‘for lab retrofitting’, and would contribute to ARC’s innovation campus ambition.
Source:Aukett Swanke (taken from planning documents)
Aukett Swanke’s life sciences project for Oxford – approved September 24
A third lab scheme by Purcell, next to Oxford’s central railway station, was approved during the same life sciences-led planning committee.
The project, for Forge Bio GP 2, involves demolishing most of two existing buildings – Beaver House and 39-42 Hythe Bridge Street – and constructing a five-storey building with a basement.
In a design and access statement, Purcell described the Bridge Labs scheme as a state-of-the-art life science facility including flexible lab and office space, which will secure 800 high skilled jobs and generate £105 million in economic activity.
As well as business space, the 19,800m² project will deliver new ‘high-quality’ space, incorporating a new café, enlarged and enhanced public realm, and a community garden.
Purcell said the existing Beaver House building ‘clashes with its historic setting and provides an uninviting arrival experience into Oxford’ from the station, as well as being under-occupied and failing to meet modern workspace standards.
It insisted Bridge Labs, which forms part of the connected Forge_KN life sciences network across Oxford, Cambridge and Stevenage, will ‘play a key role in helping Oxford remain at the cutting edge of life science development in the “Golden Triangle” area [Oxford, Cambridge and London]’.
Purcell associate partner Josh Greig said the project would ‘deliver modern, contextual architecture, which is sympathetic to the historic setting and activates the street scene on this principal route into Oxford city centre’.
Source:Purcell
Purcell’s life sciences project for Oxford – approved September 24