Balfour seals £67m Edinburgh Uni bioscience project

Balfour Beatty has signed a £67m deal with the University of Edinburgh to modernise and extend the School of Biological Sciences at the Kings Building’s campus.Under the plan, the existing 1960s built 11 storey Darwin laboratory tower will be refurbished and re-clad.Works also include building a three-storey extension, which gained planning earlier this year. This will house a lecture theatre, seminar spaces meeting rooms and a cafe.The Darwin tower will be reclad using a double-skin cladding system to enhance both the building’s appearance and energy performance.This building will also be extensively refurbished to provide 170,000 sq ft of high-quality research space by Autumn 2020.It is architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios’ first major commission in Scotland. The design team also includes Belfast-based architectural practice Ostick and Williams, for their lab expertise, and by WYG for all engineering services.When completed, the New Biology Complex will integrate existing and new buildings into one mini-campus with a total of 320,000 sq ft of research space housing more than 800 scientists.