After 7 years of planning and construction, the Edinburgh Future’s Institute opened its doors to the public on Monday 3rd June. Featuring study spaces, classrooms and multi-functional areas spread across 5 floors, there’s a lot to explore in this new study-spot, including a café and restaurant that spills out into a courtyard piazza.
Meandering through the rabbit warren of corridors that make up the university’s latest addition, the building feels more like a castle than a place to study. This is, in part, to its history as a former infirmary. Now restored, in a £120 million project (over double the budget of the Nucleus at King’s), the new institute blurs sleek modernity with original stone walls and floors, creating a stunning, peaceful atmosphere that feels a mile away from the stuffy, cramped halls of George Square, which you can still spy through windows, just across Middle Meadow Walk.
A highlight of the new building is the Canopy café and restaurant, nestled in the building’s first floor and overlooking a grass courtyard. Whilst the restaurant is more tailored to staff and visitors (with main courses at around the £16 mark), the café’s £1.50 soup of the day is great lunch option for students. With breakfast options available form 8am, and luxurious green sofas and décor, you can’t help feeling you’ve trespassed into a fancy hotel. But no, the standard issue university bins and signs grounds you back into the reality that this is, in fact, a university building – home to a wide range of new postgrad courses, as well as an undergrad degree, titled Interdisciplinary Futures.
Hints to the building’s past remain with original stonework signposting a surgical hospital and an old board of donors to the Infirmary on display. Homage is paid with a replica board with the list of donors to the Futures Institute hangs in the entrance lobby, connecting the past with the present. Old nooks and crannies have been repurposed into Tea Points – with hot water taps and dish washers – and even little one table study rooms, adding to the medieval-fort aesthetic which I’m sure will only fuel the Edinburgh-Hogwarts comparisons.
Open to all (no university cards needed as of yet), the building is a great spot to study or work, with a selection of different areas to suits different needs. Spanning 6 wings, regular maps and colour coordinated sections ensure you don’t get lost. Whilst most of the building is now completed, landscaping is still in process and some of the wings are still being completed – including a roof top balcony. Despite this, the building is still equipped to be used and enjoyed. On its opening day, out of term time, the halls are quiet but anticipation waits for September, when I’m sure the newest study spot on campus will also be the busiest.
Photos by Abigail King