January 29, 2024
Lab rats – how the UK life sciences sector is struggling to find space to work
In November 2023, plans to turn part of a golf course next to a motorway into a £340 million science park were refused by South Oxfordshire District Council. Although now classified as greenbelt, the location was the site of a landfill as recently as the 1990s and is just a stone’s throw from both the A40 trunk road and M40 motorway. The developers are expected to appeal. Whatever the details of this story, it is an example of how challenging it can be to meet demand for lab and life sciences space in the so-called Golden Triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge in the South of England. This lack of supply is acting as a brake on the UK Government’s dream of making the country a “science superpower”. More →
February 27, 2024
Where are the iconic office furniture products of yesterday?
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
Late last year, this image went viral on social media. It is of a group of Bauhaus design students from around 1927. They are called Martha Erps, Katt Both and Ruth Hellos. The full image (reproduced below) shows them with legendary office furniture designer Marcel Breuer, who Erps would later marry. The story of the photograph can be found here. On social media, though, the standard response from people of a certain vintage – my vintage admittedly – is to suggest that they were last seen supporting Echo and the Bunnymen at the Barrowland Glasgow in 1984. More →