Other panellists at the event included Alistair Cory, director, innovation science and technology campus at the University of Oxford, who said the university’s achievement of being the top rated one in the UK again was this year partly down to its response to Covid in a ‘dynamic, accelerated fashion’. Financial impacts were a big challenge, he added, albeit with Oxford having received more students than expected this year – but income from conferencing during the summer had also been hard hit. The university has had to take temporarily redundant space in the city, for instance, the Business School using the Oxford Playhouse.
Bidwells partner Richard Todd added that it was important not to overreact in terms of design. But in the same way that we might have thought it was difficult to accommodate naturally ventilated buildings with university security conditions five years ago or big open plan spaces with low energy consumption, we need to trust in our designers now. ‘We need to work harder now more than ever in creating multi-use spaces with different departments’, he said. ‘The combinations of engineering and computer sciences, the combination of science and technology start-ups sitting in the heart of an academic environment; that’s what modern design is for me. We have a responsibility to promote our ability to continue to deliver these complex projects and not let Covid move us into a retrograde step in terms of buildings being so isolated and so inflexible.’
During discussion, Todd added that there are also now signs of interest from students over the carbon performance or otherwise of university buildings. ‘That upwards pressure is only going to gain more and more traction’, he said. ‘There’s quite a bit of push’.