stress in Bristol

The Dorothy Hodgkin Building at the University of Bristol – the largest centre in Europe for stress research – was opened on 23 September 2004 by Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Technology and patron of Bristol Neuroscience.

The £18.08 million building was funded by a grant of £8.08 million from the Wellcome Trust, £5 million from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (as part of the Science Research Investment Fund partnership), and a further £5 million from the University of Bristol itself.

The building houses world-class facilities for 120 researchers, working on radical new approaches to the treatment of stress-related illness, psychiatric disorders, Alzheimer's disease and hormone problems.

The building also features a remarkable artwork, comprising moving images projected onto specially designed shutters installed inside five of its windows. These images represent some of the fundamental ideas in bioscience such as the human genome project and the structure of DNA. The commission was made possible by a £50 000 grant from the Wellcome Trust and a £30 000 grant from Arts Council England.

In recognition of its architectural distinction, the building has been named as one of the winners of a Bristol Civic Society Environmental Award for 2004.