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The head of Bristol University hailed the start of work on a new campus at Temple Meads, saying it will mean Bristol citizens will be able to get involved in the research and businesses that take place there.

Professor Evelyn Welch said they are incorporating “co-creation and collaboration” into plans for the Temple Quarter campus, which is now being built right next to Temple Meads station. The university has signed the contract with the construction company Sir Robert McAlpine to finally start work on the campus, which will have more than 4,000 students from 2026.

But the university’s vice-chancellor said she was keen for the university’s new campus to open its doors to people from all over Bristol, as never before. “This is going to be a huge, long, beautiful building, open, airy, in a wonderfully landscaped setting,” she said.

Read next: Work on the University of Bristol’s new Temple Meads campus is finally ready to begin

“Open because it will allow collaboration and allow the people of Bristol to come in and really benefit from having the university in the heart of their city.

“Uni needs to expand for two reasons. The first reason, to be honest, is that we need students to be able to afford to do what we do. The current financing system does not allow us to survive in any other way. But perhaps as, if not more important, it also allows us to innovate.

“The new campus in Temple Quarter will be much less divided into disciplinary silos. It will allow someone from business, a businessman, to sit next to a researcher. It will allow a researcher to work with students, it will allow students to work with the citizens of Bristol With that sense of co-creation and collaboration and partnership it’s being built into the very fabric of what we’re doing at Temple Quarter,” he added.

The new campus will be based on the site of the former Royal Mail sorting office, which stood an empty and derelict monstrosity for decades next to the Temple Meads station platforms. Across the River Avon on ‘Temple Island’, the university is building several large blocks of purpose-built student accommodation, with further university development on the opposite side of the floating harbor on Avon Street.

The development is a key part of kick-starting the multi-billion pound regeneration plan for the whole of Temple Quarter, which will see a new secondary school and up to 10,000 new houses from Temple Meads to St Philip’s Causeway. Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees said the new campus would also open Temple Meads station with a new east entrance, right in the heart of the campus.

“It’s the transformation of this part of Bristol, an area that has been busy, with lots of businesses around it, but has basically been neglected for decades,” the mayor said. “On this site itself was the old postal sorting office which was the derelict building that received people, or didn’t receive them, when they came to Bristol, so it will be a real transformation, but also a really visible sign of the the transformation and ambition of the city.

“It will bring massive opportunities but also some challenges that we have to manage. We need a successful university: it’s one of the iconic organizations in the city, it’s a great employer, lots of students come to the city, it’s a great help, it’s huge for the city’s global reputation and attractiveness for internal investment, but all growth brings challenge. It will put pressure on our housing, which is why purpose-built student accommodation is also included in the development,” he added.

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