GlaxoSmithKline Bioscience Hub

GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, has several sites across the UK employing around 14,000 people. The company’s Stevenage campus which was completed in 1995 is one of two of the company’s global R&D hubs which sits in the centre of the so-called ‘golden triangle’ of research sites of Cambridge, Oxford and London.

In 2009, GlaxoSmithKline embarked on an ambitious project to create a new bioscience hub on a greenfield site within the Stevenage campus to provide start-up and small to medium sized biotech and life sciences companies access to GSK’s expertise, networks and research facilities in a pioneering culture of open-innovation.

The focus of the early masterplanning studies was on the crucial connection between GSK’s existing buildings and the proposed bioscience hub. The arrangement of the existing buildings with a central courtyard open to the north offered the opportunity to drive a connection into the heart of GSK’s facilities. This soon developed into a grand sinuous landscape route populated by cafés, a health club, nursery, restaurants, and numerous spaces to relax informally or just to find a quiet place to work. The culmination of the route is the connection with GSK’s buildings – a south-facing slope overlooking a lake with a generous sweeping route into the courtyard.

The Bioscience hub is a unique partnership between GSK, the Government, the Wellcome Trust, the East of England Development Agency, and the Technology Strategy Board. The masterplan was completed in 2009. The campus opened in February 2012.

“The new Bioscience Park will affirm the UK as a global hub for the life-sciences industry. It will bring together scientists from around the world, providing them with new access to leading research and development facilities. This will foster innovation and accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines.”

Sir Andrew Witty
Chief Executive Officer, GlaxoSmithKline