Eyesore Building developments outside the Windsor Building and the famous Founder’s Building are fully underway and taking away some of the beauty of the RHUL campus.
The project, which has an expected completion date of September 2017, began this summer and now term has commenced, and students have assembled back to Egham, the changes across campus are not unnoticeable.
One first year student, living on the East side of Founder’s building, comments that the close proximity of the site to student accommodation means there is less need for an alarm for those 9am lectures, stating “although the building grind is not unbearable, it can certainly act as an alternative wake-up call in the morning”.
When Bedford Library opened in 1994, Royal Holloway’s student population was considerably lower than it stands today – the library was serving only 4,500 students. In comparison, today, there are 10,500 students to comply with a limited 825 study spaces across both Founder’s and Bedford library.
Royal Holloway ‘iQuad’ states that the development will not only bring the university up to ‘peer-related norms’, but it hopes to become envisaged as an area which caters for ‘all aspects of the student experience’.
Alongside the plans for more study space other services will include a student shop, catering outlet and an expanded Careers and Employability centre.
This is not the end of the changes to occur around campus – in keeping with the proposed growth of the student body to 12,000 by 2031, there are further plans to expand academic facilities and increase the amount of residential accommodation and car parking.
These plans were initially submitted in 2013, and include the proposed net increase of 55,000 square metres of academic space, a generation of almost 3000 new bedrooms and more than 300 parking spaces.
Principal Paul Layzell concludes that these changes across campus are set to “meet our own aspirations, and our future students’ expectations”.