Reference visit to the Edinburgh Futures Institute 

6 November 2025

University Design Forum were hosted by Damien Toner, Director of Estates at University of Edinburgh and James Nelmes from Bennetts Associates for a presentation, tour and discussion at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh Futures Institute project, a sensitive and innovative rehabilitation of the Old Royal Infirmary with a bold programme and brief, shows how a university building can be a cutting edge digitally enabled space for students, a new centrepiece for the university, and a gift and asset to the wider city. The building, a Scots Baronial hospital built in 1870 in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, was left in a dilapidated state after a new NHS hospital was built outside the city centre and the site was abandoned.

Edinburgh University took on the building in 2010 without a clearly defined brief but with the goal of restoring and renewing the building and creating a space for cross-industry innovation, inventive teaching, learning and research. Through early conceptual phases and strategy meetings with stakeholders, a programme of radical interdisciplinarity and social learning was developed and translated into an inventive spatial concept which worked with the existing fabric.

Original Victorian “Nightingale” wards were restored and turned into workspaces, flexible seminar rooms and specialised technical spaces. The spinal corridor was widened and opened up to create informal study space and dramatic double height atria. New spaces were built to house larger seminar spaces and agile classrooms, as well as a large lecture hall for university and public events, and new stairways, entrances and exits encourage flexibility and cross-communication. The restoration works included important climate-change mitigation work on drainage and water management, as well as the repair of the original natural ventilation systems.

The resulting building is one that embraces social working and learning as the primary mode, which is supplemented by dedicated formal but flexible teaching spaces. The radical interdisciplinarity approach has moved students, business and researchers from isolation to integration, with the architectural response respecting the original A listed building whilst encouraging cross-communication, innovation between disciplines, and the germination of new ways of working, start-ups and ideas.

The University Design Forum extends its thanks to the host and sponsor Edinburgh Futures Institute and Bennetts Associates and the speakers and those who contributed to the visit.

Written by Edward Christie and photos credited to Julian Robinson.