The Forum appears in Google Earth

Google has updated Google Earth with new images for Edinburgh Southside, dated 21 July 2008.

Open the title link with Google Earth to see the George Square masterplan superimposed on the Forum.

Nothing but the Best

Best Building in Scotland

It's official: we have the best building in Scotland
— a building fit for informatics@edinburgh

• Scotland on Sunday
• Times Higher Education
• Scotsman
• Evening News

RIAS Andrew Doolan Award

A spokeswoman for Bennets Associates said judges were impressed by how the Potterrow building encouraged communication between experts from different fields in its communal spaces.

She said: "There are dedicated drop-in spaces, with bean bags and comfy chairs, for staff from other campuses and departments to filter in their research. This is an unprecedented approach in academic architecture that demonstrates a real effort to create spaces that endorse the cross-fertilisation of ideas."

Joint Winners:

Potterrow, Edinburgh by Bennetts Associates
Castlemilk House Stables Block, Glasgow by Elder & Cannon Architects

Special Mention:

Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre, Inverness by Gareth Hoskins Architects Ltd

Potterrow Development, Bristo Square, University of Edinburgh
Bennetts Associates
This mix of buildings, courtyards and reinstated street lines is designed to form a new hub for the University. Faced in natural stone and quartz-aggregate polished concrete this range of new buildings house the School of Infomatics, the Infomatics Forum (housing over five hundred researchers) and the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.

The buildings’ facades are aligned along the principal streets to reinstate the area’s historic urban grain. Two interlocking ribbons of accommodation face each other across an open courtyard, orientated to receive sunshine through the seasons.

Informatics Mug

We now have an Informatics Mug. This is a limited special edition to mark the collocation of the School in the Tower and Forum—only 2008 produced.

Migration Coordinator Appointed

Marije ('Mariah', with 'i' pronounced 'a') Vugts, already known to those based at KB, has been appointed to the post of Migration Coordinator. She will work with David Wyse, Joanna Treichel, and a host of others within the School, the University, and the Potterrow Project Team, to ensure an orderly succession of moves from our current distributed state to a new order in the Forum and Appleton Tower.

Marije will be collecting information from various sources over the next few weeks, and I hereby request and require all those whom it may concern to afford her such assistance as may be necessary. Your prompt and full responses to her queries will be much appreciated.

We will hold the traditional Informatics Open Meeting at the end of induction week in September, and plans for migration will be the main topic for discussion.

Rooms with a view

The Forum is beginning to look like the visualisations!