Broadcast: News items

Work to construct the new temporary Friston building is well underway

Work is well under way on the construction of a new temporary building on campus. This will allow Arts D and E to be cleared more quickly and more simply, bringing forward by a year the construction and opening of the major new £30m academic building planned for that space. 

The new temporary building - to be named the Friston building - is being built on the northern edge of the Science car park (P1), behind the Arundel building and alongside the Hastings building. The setting, alongside woodland, prompted the naming after the Friston Forest in East Sussex. 

The building will be two storeys high and will have academic and Professional Services office space and seminar rooms for general teaching. It is expected to be in use for three years. 

The Friston building will be home to the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, pending the School's move to the new academic building once that opens. The International Student Support and the Study Abroad Offices will also be based there, moving across the road from Mantell. 

Ideally, the new temporary building would be in place for the start of the autumn term; unfortunately the timescale is simply too tight for this to be possible. Professional Services teams will move in as soon as the building is ready during the autumn term and academic units will then follow during the Christmas vacation. 

The teaching space in the Friston building will replace all the seminar and general teaching space currently provided in Arts D and E - allowing work to start on demolishing those buildings in 2010. 

As soon as the new teaching building next to the Swanborough residences opens in summer 2010, the Russell building will also be removed.