The University of Aberdeen has welcomed the approval of Aberdeen City Council of the plans for its new library.
This flagship project of the next phase of the University's £230m investment programme in campus infrastructure will match the institution's international academic ambitions to be counted among the world's top one hundred universities. At a total cost of £57 million, this will be the largest capital development in the University's 500-year history.
Professor C Duncan Rice, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, said: "The strength of the recommendation from the planning department - and the approval today by the planning committee - is a wonderful testament to the ambition and sophistication of the library project and endorses the iconic nature of the design.
"This is not just a project for the University. It is intended to be a cultural landmark of which all people in Aberdeen and in Scotland can be proud."
Chris Banks, University Librarian who joined the University in October from the British Library in London, expressed her delight at the approval, saying: "Libraries are undergoing a considerable revolution at present with increasing emphasis on flexible buildings which facilitate everything from quiet individual study through to group and seminar work, exhibition and events.
"The new building will offer the opportunity to respond to this environment and - coupled with emerging technologies which both deliver services to the desktop and enhance the onsite visitor experience - it will position the University to offer superb support to research and open up its wonderful historic collections to a much wider audience."
Project Architect Morton Schmidt, from prominent Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen, said: "The building will not only be an outstanding architectural landmark, - white, transparent and glowing from the inside and out, but at the same time it will enhance the historic buildings on the campus."
The University will proceed with detailed design work into the summer of next year, prior to taking the project to tender.
The new library will deliver on four important strategic commitments for the University:
- The library will be a outstanding facility for a university which recent rankings confirm has risen faster among the world's top two hundred universities than any other British institution, and has attracted over the last five years more than 70 internationally important professors, and many talented junior academics, from the world's most dynamic centres of learning.
- It will provide a flexible, sustainable, energy-efficient environment of the highest quality for the University's 14,000 students and an academic community of increasing intellectual strength, with the latest electronic resources adding value to an outstanding collection of printed material.
- The new building will also provide ideal conditions for the safekeeping, preservation and showcasing of the University's nationally and internationally significant holdings of priceless historic collections and archives which play an important role in defining the history of Aberdeen and the North-east as well as the wider world.
- It will enable the University to build further on its cultural and public engagement activities, and to widen access to these treasures for schools, community groups and the broader community of Aberdeen and the North-east through the provision of year round educational and other cultural events.