College is considering locating the proposed Engineering, Energy and Environment Institute (E3) off the main Trinity campus, The University Times has learned.
Current proposals for the institute indicate that the location being considered is the Trinity Technology and Enterprise Campus, based on Pearse Street, near the docks. Previous plans would have seen the institute, which will house both the School of Engineering and the School of Natural Sciences, built on the southeast corner of the main campus, opposite the dental school. The chemistry, anatomy, and disused biochemistry buildings would have been demolished as part of that proposal.
The Provost told a meeting of the College Board in January that the redevelopment of the Technology and Enterprise Campus would allow “for significant industrial collaboration that would not be possible on the main campus”.
During that meeting, the Provost also stated that some undergraduate teaching will remain on the main campus, so that “relevant Schools would retain such a campus presence”.
In an email statement to The University Times, the Director of Estates and Facilities, Paul Mangan, said that: “At this stage no final decisions have been taken on the scale or location of the proposed E3 project.”
Discussions are still ongoing, pending the publication of the Turnberry Report, which, Mangan emphasised, will enable the creation of a masterplan for the infrastructure and estate of the university, and “will help with decisions as to the locations of future developments, including E3”.
College is currently awaiting the results of the report, whose recommendations will form the basis of the Estates and Facilities Strategy.
The primary proposals for E3 were made in 2012, with the plan for construction to have had begun by the end of 2015, at a cost of around €70 million. This arose out of a summer 2011 mandate from the College, which asked the two schools involved to draw up a strategy for a joint institute. However, the development of the new Business School and Oisín House have taken precedence in Trinity’s development plan. The executive summary of the 2012 proposal states that one of the key aims of the institute is to “bring scholarly excellence and insight to understanding the constrained—and ever scarcer—resources that sustain us in our human habitat: resources of energy, earth and environment”.
The institute is one of the projects that will benefit from College’s newly launched large-scale funding campaign. The fundraising campaign also aims to build support for Trinity from the government, its agencies and industry partners, and it is likely that E3 would receive such support from the engineering sector.
