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Inspiring people to get hands on with engineering

12 Dec 2019

MECD will encourage creativity and nurture our engineering and material science talent

MECD makers space render

The Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD) will provide some incredible new spaces for engineering and material science students to flourish, and will provide the platform to showcase this talent.

From the moment you step into the buildings that make up MECD, you will know you are in a sector-leading home for engineering. The use of glass throughout the lower floors of the MEC Hall will allow students, staff and visitors to see our students in their technical workshops developing and practicing their hands-on skills. It’s not just the student spaces that have high visibility. Over the way, the York Street Building and Upper Brook Street Building’s will be home to some of our flagship research activity, all with visibility into the lab spaces. This visibility will be fundamental in helping people understand the incredible creativity encouraged by our engineering courses.

With high levels of transparency, workshops and lab spaces become amplified centres of creativity, innovation and identity, where students exchange ideas and inspiration.This inspiration will empower our students to take their studies out of the classroom and into the workshop, and spaces like the makerspace will allow them to do just that.

The makerspace will be a place for students to design and tinker to their heart's content. At Manchester, we believe engineering is about creativity and a trial-and-error attitude. This space will allow students to work independently, in groups and with trained technicians to create and develop projects that supplement their studies. This could be by working on student society projects, entrepreneurial ideas or trying their hand putting their studies into action outside of their formal teaching.

MECD has been designed to improve our students’ experience, facilitate the future of engineering and material science’s next big discoveries and provide a home to proudly display this to the world.