Informatics Forum

The Forum is designed by Bennetts Associates^[1] with Reiach and Hall, architects, and Buro Happold, engineers. The architects' brief was to provide a "forum for interaction" that will foster synergies among the 500 researchers in Informatics: Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Systems Biology, who have been brought together, under one roof, by this development.

The building was the first in Scotland to achieve a BREEAM rating of "excellent",^[2] and was constructed by Balfour Beatty.^[3]

One of the major recommendations of the 1997 international review that led to the formation of Informatics as an academic grouping at Edinburgh, was that the university should provide a building for the collocation of Informatics.^[4] An options appraisal recommended that the university should plan for the collocation of Informatics in a new construction within the university's George Square Campus, using the long-vacant Crichton Street site.

In 2002, the university embarked on a fund-raising campaign. This was followed closely by the Edinburgh Cowgate Fire of December 2002,^[5] which destroyed a number of buildings, including some of the school's accommodation at 80 South Bridge.^[6] The school took over four floors of the Appleton Tower as emergency accommodation.^[7] In the following years, plans for the school's accommodation were revised to include six floors of the Appleton Tower, and a new building on the Crichton Street Site.

In all, £42M was raised from public and philanthropic sources.^[8] Planning approval was confirmed on 12 September 2005, and work on site commenced in October 2005. The Informatics Forum was opened by then First Minister Alex Salmond in September 2008.^[3][4]

The Forum is the first phase of the Potterrow Project, the redevelopment of a site, bordered by Potterrow, Crichton Street, Charles Street and Marshall Street, that was cleared for redevelopment by the university in 1963, and has been used as a car park ever since. The Potterrow Project is itself part of a more extensive masterplan, that will see the Potterrow underpass removed and the campus extended to link Old College to George Square.^[9]

The Informatics Forum, as part of the wider Potterrow development, was joint winner of the RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award in 2008.^[1][10]