Located in the city’s new Helix quarter, a city-centre development fast becoming renowned as a global centre for innovation, the 12,800 m² Urban Sciences Building (USB) houses Newcastle University’s School of Computing alongside a series of innovative labs focused on research into the urban environment.

Opened in 2017, it has set a new benchmark for building design. Not only is it an exemplar of sustainable construction and electrically led design, it is also a ‘living laboratory’ – a smart building designed to enable continuous research and learning in the field of energy management. Newcastle University is known for its pioneering spirit and, with innovation a core element of the brief for the USB, a number of PhD researchers now have their hands on the data from the building and are already creating some fascinating outputs that we believe are a first in building management.