[London] The Urban Innovation Centre, created by the Future Cities Catapult, today [Tuesday 17th March] opens its doors to businesses, academics and city leaders to develop practical solutions for the cities of the future.
The Urban Innovation Centre is a space where urban innovators can use state-of-the-art facilities and work together to turn ingenious ideas into real city systems that will be used around the world.
The Centre will be a key facility to help the Future Cities Catapult achieve its mission to help UK businesses, especially small ones, take advantage of the growing market in future cities, from architecture and engineering, to infrastructure, design and digital technologies.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said:
“Supporting the pioneering technology behind future cities will help make our cities more clean and efficient. The Government-backed Catapult Centres are hubs for British businesses and academics to work together, helping bring their research to market. The Future Cities Catapult is already helping deliver cutting edge technologies such as the audio headset to help blind and partially sighted people navigate cities and the new Urban Innovation Centre is the UK’s next step in designing and developing the cities of tomorrow.
Professor Sir David King, Chair of the Future Cities Catapult, said:
“There’s a huge opportunity for UK businesses in helping cities to become more resilient, sustainable and focused on delivering wellbeing for their citizens. The Future Cities Catapult will help UK businesses – large and small – to innovate for this market and, at the same time, make our cities better places to live.”
As the headquarters of the Future Cities Catapult, The Urban Innovation Centre will house its Cities Lab, a decision-making theatre and exhibition space, as well as being home to a number of resident innovators and collaborators. An annual events calendar will attract an internationally renowned program of speakers.
Peter Madden OBE, Chief Executive of Future Cities Catapult, said:
“The Urban Innovation Centre will be an amazing new space for collaboration around city solutions. We’ll provide world-class facilities and expertise to support the development of new products and services for cities, for testing how they’ll perform and for the developing the business models to underpin them.”
Today also sees the announcement that Ordnance Survey will be locating its Geospatial Innovation Hub within the Urban Innovation Centre, taking up the first resident innovators spot in the building. The move aims to energise innovation in the UK geospatial industry by attracting new players, visions, thinking and markets.
Peter ter Haar, Director of Products and Innovation at Ordnance Survey, said:
“The Urban Innovation Centre gives OS’s innovation team wider access to skills, knowledge and technology. With over 10,000 daily changes to our database of more than 460 million unique geographic features, we have the most accurate and current picture of Great Britain, and our collaboration with the Urban Innovation Centre and the Future Cities Catapult should be invaluable in helping existing players and newcomers to the geospatial industry unlock its commercial potential. ”
The Urban Innovation Centre can be found at One Sekforde St, Clerkenwell, EC1R 0BE. For more information on any of the above, including how to book the space, please visit www.urbaninnovationcentre.org.