page_title: Highfield Campus
section_title: 1998-present
hierarchical_section_title: Highfield Campus / History / 1998-present
caption_attribution_description: English: Extension to Hartley Library, University of Southampton.
context_page_description: Highfield Campus is the main campus of the University of Southampton and is located in Southampton, southern England. It is the largest of the University's campuses with most of the students studying there. The campus is also the location of the main university library, the students' union as well as sports facilities.
context_section_description: Following the lobbying of the council from the University and Chesterton Consulting, local planning laws were altered, removing the need for additional parking spaces on campus. This change led to the introduction of the Unilink bus service, and also made the Chesterton master plan completely obsolete. As a result, Rick Mather Architects were hired to draw up a new masterplan for Highfield which was completed by 1998. It proposed that University Road, instead of dividing the campus, become a tree lined boulevard, with paths set back from the road and lined by simple white rendered buildings along the northern part of the campus. At this point in time, much of this northern part of the campus still contained residential buildings housing commercial services, such as banks, and the new master plan proposed demolishing these, rehousing the services into new buildings and using the space to significantly improve the landscape.
  The first of these new master plan buildings was the Zepler building in 1998, housing an extension to Electronics and Computer Sciences, and the Gower building in 1999 which housed both student accommodation on the upper floors and commercial units on the ground floor and currently houses all the banks on campus and the bookshop. These two were designed by Rick Mather and Wilson Mason and used the white rendered style that Mather felt complemented both the brick buildings of the Gutteridge designs and the concrete designs of Basil Spence. It also created a new 'gateway' for the University along Burgess Road.
  Following these two buildings, several more buildings of the same design were erected across the campus: the Nightingale building was built along University Road in 2000 to house the School of Midwifery (and now the Faculty of Health Sciences as a whole), the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute building in 2003 next to the Murray building and an extension of the Hartley Library into Engineering Square, completed in 2004. Necessitating the demolition of some minor buildings in the square, the Library extension housed new facilities for Archives and Special collections, additional shelf and reader space.
  In addition to these, the building boom continued with several other buildings in their own style. The Students' Union building was extended in 2001 to include a new nightclub and cinema facility; the Jubilee Sports Centre was completed in 2004 housing a swimming pool, large sports hall and gym located on University Road next to the Students' Union; an extension to the south of the administration building was opened in 2005 to house a new Student Services Centre and a new building for the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research was constructed in 2006 among the Engineering buildings. The Jubilee Sports Centre and the Student Services Centre were both designed in brick to blend in with the nearby residential and Gutteridge designed buildings.
  In 2005 a fire broke out in the Mountbatten building, causing the ECS department to be crippled until replacement facilities could be found. As a result, the University needed to replace the building as soon as possible and took the opportunity to create a new campus masterplan, set to last until 2021. The new and replacement Mountbatten building was opened in 2008 and included new and updated clean rooms while still being an environmentally friendly design. The master plan also included the new EEE building, which was opened in 2007 as a space for ECS, the School of Education and as an Entrance building for the campus and features a glass wall showcasing an 'internal street'.
  The latest building to be added to the campus is the Life Sciences building, housing facilities for the Faculty of Natural and Environmental Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine. Designed by global architecture firm NBBJ, the wood-clad building was created as a direct result of the Boldrewood Campus redevelopment and the need to rehouse the faculties based on that campus. Completed in 2010, it has been recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
caption: The extension to the Hartley Library, completed in 2004.
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