A GROUP of internationally-renowned architects attended the opening of Arts University Bournemouth’s new Innovation Studio.

The Innovation Studio has been developed using approximately £1.5million in funding from Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership (Dorset LEP) to support business research, development, and innovation across the region, acting as a base for small business start-ups and emerging entrepreneurial projects.

The facility will be home to some of the latest digital and physical manufacturing technologies, including Large Format Additive Printing, CNC milling and waterjet cutting, and VR/AR technologies including projection, 3D body scanning, and a green screen studio.

The Studio will aim to encourage employability between the university and local business users.

The Studio’s launch event was hosted by university Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Gough and alumni Professor Sir Peter Cook, the project’s architect.

AUB Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Gough said: “The university is humbled by the presence of leading figures from across the world of architecture, who’ve assembled on our campus to mark the opening of our new Innovation Studio.

“Architecture is often seen as the cradle of the creative arts; and perhaps as a most visible and impressive expression of art, it is wholly appropriate that this studio stands proud as a space to harbour the genesis of innovative new concepts, designs and thinking.”

The arts institution welcomed architects, academics, and urban planners to the two-day event, including French Architect and Urban Planner Odile Decq, Director of the Geddes Institute for Urban Research, Lorens Holm and Associate Professor and M.Arch Programme Director at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Gilles Retsin.

Visiting speaker and French Architect Odile Decq, said: “I'm very proud to be here at AUB to launch the Innovation Studio, designed by my good friend Sir Peter Cook.

"Being an architect is about changing and helping the world; sometimes providing shelter for people as a minimum but also giving joy to people, helping them to forget about the world outside.

"For students, going to the Innovation Studio means forgetting the limits in their brain – from their education and from where they were before – to be free to think about the world."

The event is the first of two being held by the university to celebrate the Innovation Studio; with industry and business community members being invited to hear from speakers and experience a tour of the new facility later this year.

To read more about AUB, visit aub.ac.uk.