Space for biology

By Guy Salmon

A giant new building for the Biological Sciences is soon to be erected on campus.

The Biology departments, at present crammed into the Kirk Building, will then have five times as much space for teaching and research.

It will rise between the Kirk Building and Kelburn Parade and will extend lengthwise from close to Easterfield down to the Administration Drive.

In addition, a three-storey laboratory wing with a plaza roof will extend backward between Hunter and Kirk to the Student Union Building.

Innovations include live animal rooms, constant temperature and refrigeration rooms, photographic studios and darkrooms, tank rooms, aquaria, radiation laboratories, extensive technicians' workshops, an autopsy room, a herbarium and an insectory.

There will be a Biological Sciences Library and a Museum, and two large windowless air-conditioned lecture halls similar to those in the new Lecture Block.

All senior staff will have small, fully-equipped research laboratories attached to their studies.

A special feature will be horse-shoe shaped graduate teaching laboratories fitted with projection equipment.

Tenders are being called for now and it is anticipated that the building will be ready for use in 1971.