Alsop was commissioned to develop a new 9,000sqm School of Medicine and Dentistry for Queen Mary, University of London, at their Whitechapel campus. The brief was to create a new environment for research staff and students which would stimulate the exchange of information between departments, physically opening up the school and engendering new clarity in its workings. The Alsop response was to create a building in which individual departments were placed within the structure to be identifiable to each other and from the school's exterior. Sight lines are provided from the street into every level including lower-ground laboratories and open spaces within the plan form an amenity for the users as well as providing pedestrian access across the site. The forms, suspended within the glass rectangle, house seminar and teaching spaces as well as offices; the central tenet of transparency for the college and its operations, and the hope that the forms within the structure will be shared with a broader community of local schools and other users, prompts the use of amorphous forms and bright colours, eliciting interest and enthusiasm from outside the building as well as within. Traditional research laboratory design tends to isolate the scientific research functions. The unique interaction between research departments and public facilities at The Blizard Building has only been achieved through the detailed consultation with representatives of the scientists user groups, who have actively engaged in the design process and project aspirations of cross-fertilisation and interaction.