The University of Bath is to develop a new facility that will allow researchers and construction companies from across the country to develop and explore innovative building materials.
The £1m Hive project will be part of a research park the university is developing at Swindon’s Wroughton airfield. It has secured an £800,000 grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to fund set up costs and running costs for three years.
The project is being led by Dr Mike Lawrence from the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials in the university’s department of architecture and civil engineering.
It will consist of a two-storey central hub surrounded by 16 “pods” which will be rented out to companies that want to test and develop their ideas.
Dr Lawrence told the Swindon Advertiser that some of the first projects to be tested at the park would be a Bath-led €2m programme to create a high-efficiency, low carbon building panel, and a Bath-led €10m project to create a panelised building material which cleans the internal air of buildings.
Dr Lawrence said: “Laboratory research has identified the potential to use renewable natural materials in construction. Experimentation and study using Hive is an essential stage in understanding just how these materials will perform in the real world, and how best to use them in novel low impact construction technologies.
“The Hive will provide space for this fundamental research to be carried out. The University of Bath’s researchers will use the facility for their work in this and other areas of innovative construction technology. In addition, it will be available to researchers around the country and overseas to follow their own lines of enquiry, making the Hive a global centre for research into low impact construction.
“An added feature of the Hive is that it will allow the materials and systems developed by researchers to be prototyped and tested in the field by the construction industry, making it a facility which can take blue sky thinking all the way through to mainstream construction in the shortest possible time.”
The Hive will be equipped with the very latest technologies for testing construction materials. Swindon Borough Council has granted planning permission for the research park and construction of the Hive will begin in the autumn.
