The transformation of Edinburgh’s long-empty Royal Infirmary creates a sustainable new home for the University’s new Futures Institute, a flexible workspace and education facility designed by Bennetts Associates. James Parker reports.
According to the University of Edinburgh, the core mission of its new ‘Futures Institute,’ located within the city’s formerly derelict, now refurbished Royal Infirmary, is to “support collaboration on social challenges,” as well as provide workspaces for key business sectors for the city. It is a space that brings public, private, and third sector practitioners together with researchers, students, and civic society to “tackle complex problems,” including via “clusters of co-located research” with industry, supported by a large amount of IT including audio/visual resources.
The project to restore this famous but neglected building could be described both as a complex problem and a “social challenge,” with it having deteriorated into an eyesore over the years, becoming a major blemish on the face of the city ever since the NHS exited its doors in 2003.
The key challenge for architect Bennetts Associates was therefore to retain and restore a much loved Edinburgh asset, but add to it with carefully crafted extensions to make it fit for a digitally led, hybrid set of functions, bridging the public and private sector. This was a task the practice, with its strong experience in reuse of heritage buildings in various sectors, relished as it entered the design competition for the building’s refurbishment. Another key attraction was the fact the building would also be largely opened to the public in its new guise, donating a key asset back to the city.
Background & Brief
The complex refurbishment of the Category A listed former Royal Infirmary began in 2015, and the building finally completed in 2024.. The architects say it “revives the key qualities of the existing building and transforms it through new uses, interventions and extensions.” The original ‘Scotch Baronial’ building designed by David Bryce was completed in 1879, including an interconnecting shallow plan of long corridors connecting a series of spacious Nightingale wards, designed to minimise cross-infection risk. The quality of these spaces and the overall functional plan have been exploited to the full in the new use as the Futures Institute, including in the diverse array of companies occupying co-working spaces located in the former wards.
A product of the Data Driven Innovation programme running across Edinburgh University, the Edinburgh Futures Institute supports four sectors that are critical to the local and regional economy: financial services and fintech, public services, creative industries, and tourism, festivals and travel. It forms a key part of the Quartermile development in the Lauriston area of the city.
Despite the somewhat flamboyant, castle-like exterior, the building was “remarkably functional and inventive,” say the architects. Typical of many of the ‘Nightingale design’ healthcare buildings of the era, its high windows provide excellent levels of daylight, and it had a wind-driven ventilation system, as well as connections to adjacent buildings across multiple levels. However, when the NHS vacated the building finally in 2003, it left in poor condition, with numerous unsympathetic extensions, asbestos, dry rot and areas of active structural failure.
Iain Tinsdale, senior associate at Bennetts Associates, comments: “The history of the site is interesting, Quartermile Ventures bought the whole hospital site in 2003 when the NHS decanted. Their appraisals never stacked up on the surgical hospital building, and it stood derelict for 12 years ” The then director of estates for the university “saw this as a strategic opportunity to purchase it for the university to start spreading east and west through the city, and consolidate the central campus.”
This expansion to serve a growing demand meant that more floor space was a priority, and this “speculative purchase” for the university was also pragmatic, including on sustainability grounds by retaining as much built fabric as possible. Tinsdale explains that the acquisition and subsequent design competition was actually fully informed by the client “knowing they were going to need to use it for tech enabled teaching and office space,” even though he adds the architects wouldn’t actually have an end user group until they were in the main contract works phase.
Client requirements – a ‘container’
Tinsdale pays tribute to the university’s estates department, who are a “very professional client used to delivering capital projects,” despite this scheme being a “challenge for them” due to its scope. He says that in terms of the brief, they were “very, very clear about the intention to have both teaching, research and commercial tenanted space, and that it had to be very tech enabled; it had to have a lot of connectivity through all of the spaces.”
He says that Bennetts Associates approached the combination of restored historic building and additions with a somewhat agnostic sensibility to their final function: “Very much like we knew it was going to be a ‘container’ that the client were going to put contents in; that was a term used quite heavily through the design development process.” He says that in addition to the practice’s experience in tackling often complex historic refurbishments for education and other functions such as theatres, Bennetts Associates also brought its input to the scheme from its previous integration of “commercial knowledge into academic situations; that relationship between the academic and industry.”
The approach to teaching, and integrating the teaching spaces with the external coworking spaces for the benefit of both, was fundamental to the design response. This was chiefly done using a range of ‘breakout’ spaces facilitating further discussion and networking between students, and with their staff. Professor Kev Dhaliwal, interim director at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, explains the central teaching ethos behind the spaces in the building – and how they were interwoven with IT provision to help students get the best out of lessons and connect with external institutions across the world.
Dhaliwal comments: “The programmes of study are underpinned by an interdisciplinary, data-rich and challenge-led approach which blend online and on-campus engagement and connect global cohorts of students in new ways.” The teaching spaces and digital learning environments were designed to enable “shared on-campus and online teaching and learning activity.” This means that individual classes, lectures and contributions are recorded and
livestreamed so that they can be shared – “so students can build a learning community – across modes and time-zones.” Students studying online have a presence in on-campus classrooms via video, audio and text, and conversely, students studying on-campus can work with teams located across the globe.
Many courses feature ‘fusion learning’ consisting of a mix of presentations, discussions and group work. Most of the teaching spaces were designed to facilitate this type of learning with specially equipped room cameras and ceiling microphones to foster inclusive discussions and learning between online and on-campus participants. In addition, hybrid team and group work is facilitated by tables equipped with dual monitors, microphones and speakers, and a camera.
The Futures Institute, which opened in summer 2024, already has more than 250 external partners and organisations co-located in the co-working ‘cluster spaces.’ These include Fintech Scotland and Natwest Group, Architecture & Design Scotland, Innovation Unit, Nesta, Police Scotland, and Public Health Scotland. Creative sector partners include Activity Stream, Brightside Studios, Create Future, TakeNote, and Ray Interactive, and there are a further range of partners in the data services sector.
The building also hosts 13 different research groups from across the university’s three colleges, totalling over 150 researchers. Disciplines studied include ethical AI, including the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) project and a new Doctoral Training Centre which is training the next generation of researchers and innovators in designing “responsible and trustworthy natural language processing,” with more set to arrive in 2025.
Site & existing condition
The building was in “a really poor state,” says Tinsdale, with the NHS having stopped its maintenance regime before it was decanted, around 14 years before the start of this project. “They had lost floors, there was water ingress through the solum spaces and in the roof,” he explains. Bennetts Associates ended up working on the project for a constant 10 year period, almost as custodians of this important asset. “We were doing stabilisation work, surveys, asbestos strip and intrusive investigations, to try and de-risk it as much as we could.” He adds: “It became apparent very quickly that there were an awful lot of issues.” The result was a significant enabling works contract, which was extended from 12 to 18 months “to strip out a huge amount of the asbestos, and tackle a lot of the dry rot.” He said that as per usual in such contracts on major buildings, after “pulling that thread,” more and more issues were revealed with the structure.
So, before new constructions could be added, a comprehensive programme of repair and reconstruction was implemented for the building, including substantial floors replacement as well as asbestos removal, and strengthening of walls and roofs. Also, all external surfaces would be insulated, and natural ventilation reinstated.
There were also a range of interventions that had been made over the years to the building which were not conducive to its future intended use, and were concealing the building’s original beauty, so these had to be removed.
Design response
In order to turn a historic but dilapidated former surgical hospital into a state of the art education and coworking facility, several key moves were needed. First and foremost, as well as the asbestos, the structure was stripped of its later accretions, so that the external and internal forms could once again be seen at their most impressive. This ranged from removal of extensions and mezzanine levels to removing suspended ceilings and services.
The original plan of Nightingale-style pavilion wards, remains, with four to the north and two to the south, organised around the central clock tower and the 4 metre wide spine corridor running the 125 metre length of the building. Due to the driver to prevent infection, the wards are very separate from each other, making them ideal for locating individual co-working areas distinct from the teaching facilities.
After many years of the building being accessed from the rear, via A&E, the “neglected’ main entrance has been “reopened and rejuvenated, making the clocktower the focal point once again.” The adjacent new pedestrian square makes a major contribution to the city’s public realm and connects the building to the wider environment.
Iain explains the considerable benefits of the initial structure for the new function, despite being designed for healthcare: “The thinner parts, the wards themselves, are only about eight metres wide, and about five metres floor to floor at their tallest, so you’ve got huge amount of daylight and easy, natural ventilation in all those spaces.”
The university wanted to create a “much more collaborative type of teaching space,” and have a fruitful mix of tenanted spaces, including innovative start ups, with the teaching, which itself features an array of interesting AI ethics subject matter for example. There are also ‘maker spaces’ for tenants and teaching, and a range of crossover interests and subjects shared between the two.
Iain pinpoints the way the design “flips” the original hospital design of separation, to provide more connectivity between these generous spaces. He explains how the extensions along the north flank of the corridor are teaching spaces, but also “provide another line of connectivity between the ‘wards.’” He adds: “It was all driven by the idea that the teaching spaces in the former wards can have one type of teaching, and then without changing any rooms, they can all break out into the seminar space to hold a small lecture, and then go back out into their teaching spaces.”
Iain explains that the final piece of the puzzle is the extension along the south edge of the main corridors, “always envisaged as a sort of dwell space for the university,” and “essentially break out space.” Its purpose is to “try and promote the same discussion that many higher education projects talk about – mixer space outside the teaching areas. But it does more than that in this building, because the university had the aspiration to open the building up to the city, and be a new front door for the institution.”
For example, all of the corridor seating areas, and the large dwell spaces with their comfortable seating, desks, meeting booths and power sources, can be freely used by the public, in addition to the large and welcoming cafe and restaurant spaces.
However, the most significant design move, and which really “unlocked the whole scheme,” says Tinsdale, was “managing to persuade Historic Environment Scotland to let us demolish the gatehouse, which was actually Grade B listed.” Previously, there was no level access to the main entrance, and the gatehouse plus its railings and the gates were a “real blocker for anybody coming in; it didn’t feel welcoming at all, and for the longest period of time, nobody used the entrance.”
New additions & facades
The other main addition was a 500-seat events space at lower ground level beneath the public square, which “wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the plan.” Making this space accessible, as part of “opening the building and reinstating its civic presence to the city” was a very important part of the brief for the client. This was also a major challenge, but the building has DDA compliant ramping all the way up and around the sides of the refurbished and reinstated steps. The public square is enhanced by the double-height light boxes at grade which bound one edge of the new space and “signify something new has happened to the city,” says Tinsdale.
Accommodation was added on either side of the main corridor, including four-storey extensions to the north providing flexible teaching and events spaces, as well as surrounding ‘touch-down areas’ needed by the Futures Institute. The wards housing the co-working areas were faithful to the elegant Nightingale proportions, and finished as “simple, white volumes to contrast the corridors,” which are a mix of colour and stone floor slabs, exposed brick vaulting and stone walls.
Iain asserts that a significant amount of floor space has been added, somewhat deceptively given the building initially appears largely unaltered. The extensions “wrap over the roof, so there is a new roof top to the pavilions on top of the extensions, as well as a link corridor at level four which never really existed before.” He says this is an example of how the design “consolidates the circulation, so that it’s much more interconnected.”
He says the level four spaces are “much more quirky,” being in the roof space, with rafters exposed. “One of the great things about the scheme is the variety of types of space, the wards, the smaller rooms within the wards, the breakout and dwell spaces along the south, and the new seminar teaching spaces up in level four.”
There have been limited additions of new facades: “We tried to use the existing building as much as possible and then also really show it off,” says Tinsdale. “So as much as we’ve created a new four storey element in between those two wards, we’ve only got one line of new external facade. Further space efficiencies have been achieved by “pulling the core spaces” such as toilets, the IT hub, escape stairs and support spaces together into clusters. “This maximises the natural ventilation that we can achieve around the outer perimeter for the actual teaching spaces,” says Tinsdale.
In terms of acoustics, Iain admits the architects were “quite worried about the dwell spaces in the corridors,“ but that in the event, “because it’s rubble stone, it’s quite multifaceted, and it automatically breaks a lot of the reverb up.” However, in the teaching spaces, there were stricter demands, and there was “a lot of work done to stop sound transmission between spaces and the new linings, new ceilings, new finishes; we’ve got absorption anywhere that we could get in the ceiling rafts.” He adds: “The timber panelling on the teaching walls and the ward spaces were the most challenging, because there’s more window than wall.”
Whole life carbon
A Whole Life Carbon Assessment was carried out on the scheme by Cundall, according to BS EN15978:2011, as well as the RICS ‘Whole life carbon assessment for the built environment 2017’.
The project aimed at 2020 LETI benchmarks for emissions for educational new build, including an “upfront carbon target” of 500 kgCO2e/m² (“without sequestration for substructure, superstructure, MEP, facade, and internal finishes“). With sequestration included, the project’s whole life carbon target was 675 kgCO2e/m².
Cundall projected the emissions over 60 years from the construction as a whole, and their results showed an Upfront Embodied Carbon score of 361 kgCO2e/m², improving on the LETI target by some distance, and an overall Whole Life Embodied Carbon of 603 kgCO2e/m², also under the LETI target.
Conclusion
The project’s architect says that one of the most satisfying aspects of the restoration is how it has opened up what was formerly a ‘closed’ healthcare facility, then a derelict local eyesore, so it’s not only a rejuvenated asset, but one which can be used by the community.
Founder of Bennetts Associates Rab Bennetts sums up what the Futures Institute project means for him as an Edinburgh native, as well as for his practice: “This has been an immensely rewarding project to work on and hugely important not only for the practice but also for the university and my home city. While it was important that the building no longer feels like a hospital, we have carefully honoured its history and the memories of those who used it. The design has changed how people experience the spaces, interconnecting the building with the city as its new identity evolves.”
As well as the many ‘partner’ firms listed earlier who are occupying the building already since completion, the Institute will be welcoming further occupants in 2025, as the ‘hub’ for Tourism, Festivals and Travel innovation launches with partners joining the cluster spaces in one former hospital ward.
The architects assert that “the range of spatial experiences are unlike anything that could be achieved with an equivalent new build, and that the design not only demonstrates that listed buildings can be changed without detriment to the original, but also that low carbon-re-use of an existing building can be stimulating and responsible.”
Professor Dhaliwal of the Futures Institute says that the building becoming an ‘open’ resource for the city is the lasting outcome of this highly successful project – “it is very much ‘patet omnibus’ – open to all, as it says on the door. We’re so proud to have been part of making this a reality for the whole university and for the city – opening the doors again to this historic public institution and welcoming Edinburgh residents, visitors and university staff to the reimagined spaces.” He concludes: “Every element of the design project considered this and works to encourage people to use the space, echoing our vision of interdisciplinary education, research and collaboration.”