Our Campus and Facilities

Pay a visit to any of our sites and you can see how much we’ve already invested in our fantastic facilities.

The 'Parkside Building' is part of the City Centre Campus expansion and provides a state-of-the art home for the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media (ADM), incorporating the Parkside Media House. It has been ready for staff and students since September 2013. The Curzon Building is the latest development which opened in 2015.

Designing the Parkside Building

The design has been influenced by the ideals of the Bauhaus – a German school founded by Walter Gropius that combined crafts and the fine arts, operating from 1919 to 1933 when it was forced to close down by the Nazi regime.

The building formed the first phase of Birmingham’s Eastside - an important part of Birmingham’s Big City Plan. It could fit in the same volume as the Albert Hall and 32 Olympic size swimming pools could be squeezed inside.

State-of-the-art facilities

ADM students are working from a core of workshops in the centre of the five-floor building, with studio space around them. There is also ‘collision space’ where students and staff from different courses see each other to pass the time of day, and exchange thoughts and ideas. The design of the atrium embodies this notion, with a central circulation stair encouraging students to move through a series of shared spaces before entering their department. The idea is also expressed in the main building facades, seemingly formed by a series of overlapping and interlocking boxes.

The Parkside Building also houses the University’s School of Media, where cutting-edge facilities include five state-of-the-art TV studios, together with seven radio studios and post-production suites, while classroom teaching on the courses moved to Millennium Point. These resources were integrated with those already at Millennium Point for students on media technology courses, allowing for more collaboration between students on different programmes and creating a greater campus ‘feel’.

Joining Millennium Point

The 18,310m² Parkside Building is adjacent to the landmark Millennium Point building, already home to the University’s Faculty of Computing, Engineering and The Built Environment (CEBE) and Birmingham School of Acting (BSA), and both buildings are connected thanks to a bridge link.

This has provided the University with the opportunity to converge some of the student support facilities within Millennium Point, including the re-modelling of over 3,000m² of existing areas within CEBE.

Students, staff and visitors to the new campus also benefit from nearby transport links including the redeveloped New Street station and the proposed high speed rail link.

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