Located on Shakespeare Street in central Nottingham, the scheme includes two sites of development. Byron House replaced existing student union facilities and comprises three levels of social and leisure space located below four residential blocks. The adjacent Gill Street site replaced an at grade car park with a new subterranean car park with 4 levels of student accommodation located above. The sites occupy tight city centre locations with associated constraints of major services, tramways and sewerage infrastructure creating a number of engineering challenges that needed to be resolved to facilitate the new works.

The Byron house site includes a basement covering the entire building footprint which houses a double height student nightclub and indoor sports facilities. The upper basement level includes student union facilities and additional student recreation areas. A podium slab constructed from post tensioned concrete spans over the entire basement structure and acts as a major transfer structure to support the 4 blocks of accommodation situated above. To simplify the design and economy of the transfer podium, the student accommodation blocks are constructed from light gauge load bearing steel framing. Blocks varying in height from 4 to 8 storeys. In total 911 beds of student accommodation are provided across the two adjacent sites.

The project represented a capital investment of over £80M and was a joint venture between University Partnerships Programme, Nottingham Trent University and Vinci Construction UK.

Airey and Coles have a long standing working relationship with UPP and were appointed as civil and structural engineers to provide a full suite of services for the entire design process from concept through to completion.

The light gauge steel frame elements were provided by Metframe and Freysssinet were appointed by VCUK to assist with the major post tensioning works in the podium transfer slab.