CSE Innovation Space, University of Westminster

A showcase hub for ideas and industry

When the University of Westminster’s School of Computer Science and Engineering set out to reimagine its 115 New Cavendish Street home, the brief was to create labs and workspaces worthy of hosting both big ideas and industry partnerships.

In their existing guise, the spaces offered little flexibility for group work, no real home for the learning modules that connected students with industry partners, and nowhere meaningful to host open days or showcase events.

Our three in one solution

Workshops with academics, lecturers, PhD students, and staff shaped both the design and the brief, with careful attention given to the range of people using the spaces — including the specific needs of neurodivergent students.

We opened up three existing rooms on the ground floor into a single, accessible space — part programming lab, part collaborative working area, part exhibition space. Writing walls, breakout zones, and small collaboration pockets tucked into every lab give students somewhere to step away from the screen and think.

The project later expanded into shared offices for academics and visiting lecturers, dedicated space for PhD students, meeting rooms, and a collaboration zone with a refreshment point.

The finishing touches

The interior design drew its cues from the campus itself. The warm red brick of Westminster’s architecture informed a palette of rich greens and terracottas — a deliberate counterpoint to the cool, corporate tones that tend to define tech environments.

Perhaps the most memorable addition comes from the graphic design team. Two pioneering computer scientists — Grace Hopper and Mark Dean — now occupy the walls of the main labs, giving each room its own identity, and students something to look up at when the work gets hard.