“We want to create space for innovation”
A look inside The University of Bristol new building at Temple Quay, Tuesday 23 September 2025.(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
It has a 100m long indoor ‘street’, a completely circular lecture theatre, striking wide yellow staircases around an open central area, community rooms and labs where it is hoped the next big advance in computer technology will happen. Welcome to the new Bristol University campus, which is as far from a traditional uni as you can imagine.
The new building is now taking shape – the last huge windows were being installed this week, and inside is a hive of activity with workers installing all the interior pipes and wires that will keep the building going, while others were busy laying down the concrete floors.
But what will go on inside the building when it does finally open, and what will the impact be on the university, and the wider city as a whole?
When is the building opening?
“We first conceived the idea in 2016, but it took until 2023 to work through all of the preparations and the planning,” said Prof Judith Squires, the university’s deputy vice-chancellor, who is the lead on the new campus project.
“It took a long time to get ourselves into a position where we were comfortable to sign that contract. It was all-systems-go from that very day when we signed the contract in 2023. It’s only been two years to get to this stage, it’s been incredibly quick. We are on budget and on schedule to open in September 2027,” she added.
Where is the new campus?
In 1997, the Royal Mail’s main Bristol sorting office moved from a site to the east of the platforms at Temple Meads station to a new location on the A38 up in Filton. From then and for more than 20 years, the old building fell into disrepair. By the mid 2010s it was considered Bristol’s worst eyesore, giving anyone who arrived into the city by train a strikingly dystopian view as their first glimpse.
It was eventually demolished in early 2019, and the space was left empty for more than four years, before work began in 2023 on the university’s new ‘Enterprise Campus’.
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The site occupies the triangle of land directly next to the last platform at Temple Meads station, with Cattle Market Road to the south east and the Floating Harbour to the north. Initial plans involved two large buildings and a wide ‘street’, but the second building has been put on hold, with the University now keen to wait for the rest of the development of the Temple Quarter area to catch up, and take a decision on whether that space nearer Cattle Market Road will be developed and with what.
A look inside The University of Bristol new building at Temple Quay, Tuesday 23 September 2025.(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)How many students will attend the new Enterprise Campus
When all the courses are established, there will be a total of 4,600 students coming to study at the Enterprise Campus. The vast majority of those will be post-grad students, with some third year students from the business school moving there too. There will be a total of 650 staff as well.
What will go on inside the Enterprise Campus?
The vast new building will be a home for students, but also for some of Bristol’s high-tech businesses. Prof Squires called them ‘industrial partners’. So a company could set up a research facility within the campus, and draw on the expertise and research of their own staff, the university’s academics and students.
“We want to create space for innovation,” she said. “We are working with a whole host of industrial partners, bringing them into the building to work with our key research groups. So our research groups and our industrial partners and our students are co-located in this building, working together to really drive innovation, particularly in areas of AI, cyber-security, digital technologies, and a whole range of activities that really align with the Government’s industrial strategy, to make sure that Bristol continues to be at the leading edge of that kind of inclusive growth agenda, really drawing on our research expertise, and working with our industrial partners to deliver that.
A look inside The University of Bristol new building at Temple Quay, Tuesday 23 September 2025 – Prof Judith Squires, right, gives a tour of the facility(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“We want this space to be a really inclusive place, so we are working with our civic partners and the ground floor in particular will be porous and open to members of the local community, our civic partners, and we want to welcome them and work with them to understand how we drive local agendas.
“We’ve designed specific places within the ground floor to bring our civic partners in, called our Bristol Rooms, they are designed to be inclusive and gather different people around to have those conversations which will allow our academics, our students and our industrial partners to work with the local community on really important agendas for the city,” she added.
The university said it hopes that the Enterprise Campus will spawn new high-tech businesses, bringing to development and market new products and technologies that were created in the campus. “It will be home to world-class teaching and research across business, innovation, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, quantum and more,” said a spokesperson.
“More than just a physical space, it will deliver a transformative, interdisciplinary approach to innovation – and it will help start-ups, scale-ups and corporations gain access to the world-class research expertise and entrepreneurial talent from all faculties at the University of Bristol.
A look inside The University of Bristol new building at Temple Quay, Tuesday 23 September 2025 – the new eastern entrance to Temple Meads station will open in September 2026 and is located right next to the new campus(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“It will house the Bristol Innovations Zone (BIZ), a dedicated space for around 300 enterprise partners, providing flexible co-working and event spaces, specialist labs, state-of-the-art equipment, skills training, support services and events. It comes as Bristol was named this month as the best city for start-ups in the UK’s Startup Index, leading in critical metrics such as access to talent, productivity, infrastructure and growth potential,” she added.
What is the impact on the local area?
The first and biggest impact for people in Bristol is the creation of a new entrance to Temple Meads station. That new eastern entrance has been created where there is a wall at the end of the tunnel that access all the platforms, and will open next September when the uni campus opens. It will open up access to the whole of the Temple Quarter area to the east side.
The coming of the Enterprise Campus has already triggered big changes to the area ‘behind’ Temple Meads. Several new purpose-built student accommodation blocks have already been built, with another due to open next September right next to the St Philips Causeway.
(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
After the Enterprise Campus opens, a new conference centre, 500 homes and more student accommodation will be built on ‘Temple Island’, across the other side of Cattle Market Road and over the River Avon, while more offices and homes are planned along the Feeder canal too.
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