Take a closer look

Over the next two years, restoration work will take place on the Queen's Tower at the South Kensington Campus. During that time, scaffolding will be erected around the Tower and hoardings will be placed around its base.

These hoardings feature images of buildings around our campuses. Take a closer look and learn more about each of the images and the buildings they show.

The Queen's Tower

The Queen's Tower is all that remains of the Imperial Institute, which was built to mark Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887 and opened in 1893.

The Imperial Institute was designed by T. E. Collcutt in the neo-renaissance style. The building measured over 200 metres long with a central tower (now known as the Queen's Tower) and smaller towers at its east and west ends.

The building contained a library, laboratories, conference rooms and exhibition galleries with gardens at the rear.

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Imperial's historic buildings

Royal College of Science

The Royal College of Science was designed by Sir Aston Webb and completed in 1906. Webb designed multiple buildings that are now part of Imperial. He was also the architect of many buildings in ‘Albertopolis’, the home of cultural and educational institutions on and around Exhibition Road. One of buildings he designed was the V&A – look out for similarities to the Royal College of Science in its façade on Cromwell Road.

Much of the original Royal College of Science building has now been demolished, to make space for new College buildings in the 1950s and 1960s. The remains of the Royal College of Science building is now houses part of the Department of Chemistry, comprising labs, workshop rooms and lecture theatres.

Did you know…

The Royal College of Science once ran the whole length of Imperial College Road. Today, only the eastern wing of the building survives.

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Royal School of Mines

The Royal School of Mines is one of the oldest buildings on the South Kensington Campus. Designed by Sir Aston Webb, it was built between 1909 and 1913. Today, the Royal School of Mines is home to departments within the Faculty of Engineering, including the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, and the Department of Materials.

Did you know…

The building has been used in many film and television productions, including Kingsman (2015), Sliding Doors (1998) and Poirot (1993).

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Modern South Kensington

City and Guilds Building

Although a City and Guilds Building has existed at the South Kensington Campus since the 1880s, much of the building we see today dates from the 1960s.

As part of a major redevelopment plan, the building, which houses the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, was transformed to provide new study and breakout spaces for students, upgraded administrative infrastructure and two new wind tunnels capable of producing speeds of 100mph for use in teaching and research.

Did you know...

The building still contains the original nineteenth-century bell and clock mechanism.

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Bessemer Building

The Bessemer Building houses the Department of Bioengineering and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. The building was originally built in the 1940s, further developed in the 1960s and then retrofitted by architects Sheppard Robson in 2006, creating the impressive canopy and a new façade. The modernisation of this building created more accessible, usable spaces, including fully AV-equipped seminar rooms, biomedical and bio-nanotechnology facilities as well as administrative offices.

Did you know…

Spaces in the Bessemer Building have been designed to work as cells, which can be expanded and contracted by partitions to create a flexible, adaptable workspace. This is also the case in the wet, dry and open laboratories.

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Blackett Laboratory

The Blackett Laboratory is home to Imperial’s Department of Physics and named after Nobel laureate and former Head of the department, Professor Patrick Blackett.

Blackett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948 for his “development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation”.

Constructed between 1957 and 1961, the building was originally known as the Physics Building, before changing its name in honour of Professor Blackett in the early 1960s.

The Blackett Laboratory was the site of Professor Abdus Salam’s work on the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979, as well as Professor Tom Kibble’s work, which defined the mechanism by which gauge bosons acquire mass via the Higgs field. This research helped lead the way to the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle in 2012.

More recently the building has been home to Professor Sir John Pendry and his work on the creation of meta-materials and his research into invisibility cloaking and the theory of the perfect lens.

The building was designated an historic site by the European Physical Society (EPS) in 2014.

Did you know...

Above the building’s entrance sits a relief sculpture designed in 1958 by Royal College of Art Professor, John Skeaping. The sculpture depicts a range of scientific images and equations and maps out the state of physics at the time.

You can read more about some of the patterns featured in the sculpture on the Finding Patterns blog by the Department of Physics’ artist in residence, Geraldine Cox.

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Faculty Building

The Faculty Building is one of several buildings on campus designed by Foster + Partners, who were also responsible for London City Hall, Berlin’s redevelopment of the Reichstag Building, Wembley Stadium and Stansted Airport.

Situated alongside Dalby Court, the building's opening in 2004 formed a key part of the plan to transform the South Kensington campus.

It houses many of Imperial College London’s administrative staff and contains a mixture of offices and open plan spaces. The building is clad with opaque blue glass panels chosen by Danish artist Per Arnoldi – their arrangement corresponds to the path of the sun to ensure correct shading in the building.

Did you know…

The ramp bisecting the building was designed to offer a dramatic view of The Queen’s Tower.

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Communal spaces

Dangoor Plaza

At the heart of the South Kensington Campus, Dangoor Plaza stretches from the Sherfield Building and the Central Library to the Skempton and Chemistry Buildings, providing green space for staff, students and visitors. The transformation of the space in 2021 was funded by a gift from the Dangoor family and The Exilarch Foundation. Overlooking the Plaza is the Queen’s Tower, which was built to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

Did you know…

Dangoor Plaza is home to Imperial's new sculpture, ALERT, created by artist Antony Gormley in 2022.

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Dalby Court

Dalby Court is an open quadrangle that is a meeting point for staff and students. It is named after Professor William Ernest Dalby (1862–1936), who produced a number of balancing engines in his work at Imperial, and which contributed to the development of more efficient railway engines. 

Did you know…

Dalby Court also conceals Imperial’s Central Heat and Power Plant, which is situated underneath a deck made from recycled timber and plastic. The Central Heat and Power Plant is powered mostly by exhaust energy generated from the production of electricity, which in turn produces heat for heating and hot water.

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College Main Entrance

Located on South Kensington’s iconic Exhibition Road, the College Main Entrance was designed by architects Foster + Partners and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2004. Behind the reception hangs a huge artwork by Danish artist Per Arnoldi, created in collaboration with scientists from Imperial College London’s Hammersmith Campus and depicts a scan of the human brain.

Did you know…

Arnoldi’s artwork is based on a real brain scan of a professor from Imperial College London.

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Imperial College Union

Imperial College Union brings together some of the oldest buildings at the South Kensington Campus. Designed by Sir Aston Webb in 1909, the Union buildings surround a central quadrangle, which is also home to Beit Hall, an undergraduate hall of residence. This quad provides open space for students to relax in, and is also located next to the venues FiveSixEight, Metric and Union Bar – popular places for students to meet.

Did you know… 

The Union Building was the site of the first ever gig by rock band Queen.

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Medical campuses

ICTEM Building

Opened in 2012 following a £73 million investment, this is the UK’s largest ever investment in research facilities and is home to laboratory space for 450 scientists along with a dedicated clinical trial facility. The building also houses the British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial, the Imperial Cancer Research UK Centre and teams from the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre. It offers next-generation sequencing machines for research in areas such as heart disease and cholesterol management.

Did you know… 

On the ground floor of the building is the Wellcome Trust–McMichael Clinical Research Facility, which has two wards where new medical treatments can be tested in both patients and healthy volunteers.

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Burlington Danes Building

Built as a collaboration between GlaxoSmithKline, Imperial College London and the Medical Research Council, the Burlington Danes Building is a centre of excellence for clinical imaging. Located on the Hammersmith Campus, it sits on the site of the former Burlington Danes School and adjoins Hammersmith Hospital.

The building is home to the Faculty of Medicine, including the Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research, the Department of Brain Sciences, Mass Spectrometry and the Glycosciences Laboratory.

Did you know…

The radiation rooms in the Burlington Danes Building are finished in anti-radiation paint.

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Hammersmith Hospital

Hammersmith Hospital, located in White City, is a teaching hospital which forms part of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine. During the First World War, the building was turned into a military hospital, and developed expertise in crush syndrome through treating air raid victims during World War II. More recently, the hospital has become well-known for its clinical research through its strong links to Imperial and the Medical Research Council.

Did you know…

Hammersmith Hospital was home to the world’s first linear accelerator designed for medical use and installed in a hospital at the Medical Research Council’s Radiotherapeutic Research Unit.

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St Mary's Hospital

Part of Imperial College London’s medical teaching and research campus, St Mary’s Hospital, located near London’s Paddington Station, is a major acute hospital for north-west London as well as being a leading maternity centre offering consultant- and midwife-led care. It provides treatment across a range of specialties and is one of London’s four trauma centres, in addition to having a 24-hour Accident and Emergency department.

It was at St Mary’s that Professor Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. The hospital was founded in 1845 and has a private maternity centre, The Lindo Wing, where many notable celebrities and Royals have been born, including the Prince of Wales.

Did you know… 

Diamorphine, a semi-synthetic opioid drug used as painkiller for moderate to severe pain, was first made from morphine at St Mary’s Hospital by C.R. Alder Wright in 1874.

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Francis Crick Institute

Located in an impressive building next to St Pancras International station, the Francis Crick Institute is a partnership of six of the world’s leading biomedical research institutions: The Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, University College London, Imperial College London and King’s College London. The Institute was initiated in 2007 to respond to a UK government report on the funding of health research and it brought together a pioneering scientific vision in a state-of-the-art building. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2016 and houses over 2,000 people and 100 research groups.

Did you know…

The design of the building echoes that of historic buildings in the local area, such as the vaulted steel roof which evokes St Pancras International station – and also contains 810 solar panels, wild roof gardens and bat boxes.

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White City Campus

Molecular Sciences Research Hub

The Department of Chemistry moved into this custom-built facility on Imperial’s White City Campus in 2018. The building has been awarded BREEAM ‘Excellent’ Certification for its overall environmental and operational performance, awarded to the top 10% of UK new non-domestic buildings and marks best practice in sustainable buildings. It was designed by Aukett Swanke architects with a stone façade, backlit perforated bronze panels and triple-glazed curtain walling.

The facility offers a range of academic and creative uses including research and technology spaces, plus flexible teaching and conference spaces.

Did you know…

The building’s residential accommodation has pod bathrooms and kitchens that were prefabricated in Italy.

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Sir Michael Uren Hub

An exciting 13-storey building stories set in Imperial’s White City Campus, the Sir Michael Uren Hub houses state-of-the-art laboratory and office facilities for Biomedical Engineering. It houses a range of departments and faculties and drives clinical translation of Med-Tech innovation both through the collaboration of teams within its walls and its proximity to the Hammersmith Hospital.

Over 500 engineers, clinicians and scientists work inside this building to develop new and affordable medical technologies, from ways to create bionic limbs to methods to combat dementia. 

Did you know…

The Hub was made possible by a donation of £40 million from Imperial alumnus Sir Michael Uren OBE and the Michael Uren Foundation.

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Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB)

A centre for office space, laboratories and research facilities, the I-HUB offers short- and long-term tenancy options for innovators from around the world.

Here, businesses, entrepreneurs and world-class researchers can share ideas and turn scientific and technological discoveries into new products and services. The building has two wings joined by an impressive seven storey glazed atrium, allowing natural light to flood into the core of the building.

Did you know…

The I-HUB’s strategic location was deliberately chosen to make use of the excellent transport links to central London and 30-minute travel time from Heathrow Airport.

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Scale Space

Bringing together life sciences and tech startups, Scale Space houses a collaborative network of venture builders, universities, corporate innovators and growing businesses whose mission is to unlock the potential of UK innovation. 

Offering tailor-made space for high-growth businesses and startups and supported by the UK’s leading digital venture builder Blenheim Chalcot, this is a facility and community that brings together members and helps them scale up.

Did you know… 

The building offers a dedicated sports facility where Imperial students can play football, basketball or netball.

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Silwood Park Campus

Located 25 miles west of London, Silwood Park comprises around 100 hectares of natural parkland in Berkshire. It has been part of Imperial since 1947 and is renowned as a centre for life sciences research.

Did you know…

One of the highlights of work at the Silwood Park Campus is the annual Bugs, Birds and Beasts Day, a nature activity day for families, hosted in the parklands of Silwood Park. You can learn more about Bugs, Birds and Beasts Day on the website for the Georgina Mace Centre for the Living Planet, a research centre based at Silwood Park.

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Learn more about our campuses

Visit our timeline of College developments to learn more about Imperial's history and how our campuses have evolved since 1907.

You can also find out more about new development projects on our Estates website.