Middle Campus (new Admin Building, new School of Economics and significant additions to library space)

The new Student Administration Building on middle campus - perched above the new Economics Building - was scheduled for practical completion on 25 November. Occupation of the building is set to begin this month.

The 1 400m2 building will accommodate the Admissions Office, the Student Accommodation Office, Student Records, the Examinations and Doctoral Degrees Board Offices, the Office of the Deputy registrar, academic administration, student systems support and IAPO. The Kramer quad is to be remodelled for Undergraduate Financial Aid, Extra Mural Studies (returning to Kramer after a decade) and classroom and staff space for the law faculty.

Works completion on the new 3 964m2 School of Economics building is scheduled for 7 April 2011, meaning the builders will hand the building over to UCT on 7 April; and to all intents and purposes, people can start moving in the next day. There will be numerous naming opportunities for offices, laboratories and rooms inside the building.

The relocation of this department from upper campus (although undergraduate teaching will remain on upper campus, the department will move in its entirety, and bring together widely dispersed research units) will create accessible space for the growing economics cohort (nearly 20% of UCT's 25 000 students take courses in economics), and simultaneously open up space on upper campus so desperately needed by the humanities and commerce faculties.

The Law Library has been expanded at the same time and the library has inherited the old admin archives space.

The total cost for the middle campus project is R158 million.

Inevitably, building works have affected the Kramer Building as well. The roof of Lecture Theatre 2 has been flattened and the internal layout of the library has been squared off (the old layout was octagonal), eating into the old archives area.

The new archives facility is at Mill Court on Main Road.