About

The Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment was established in August 2019 through an £8M grant awarded via Research England’s E3 (Expanding Excellence in England) Fund. The unique collaboration brings together bio-scientists from Northumbria University and architects, designers and engineers from Newcastle University.

Our vision is to make built environments which are life-sustaining and sustained by life. Our mission is to develop biotechnologies to create a new generation of ‘Living Buildings’ which are responsive to their natural environment; grown using living engineered materials to reduce inefficient industrial construction processes; metabolise their own waste, reduce pollution, generate energy and high-value products and modulate their microbiome to benefit human health and wellbeing.


The HBBE is a unique research centre, not only for the North East of England but also internationally and is an example of what can be done when two neighbouring research institutions come together. Our contribution to the national research base is to make the UK a leader in this new field of Biotechnology in the Built Environment by creating a research hub capable of creatively designing and building using biotechnology at multiple scales, from molecular interactions to whole buildings, while addressing the human context of their deployment.

The HBBE offers a growing portfolio of research equipment and facilities, including a state-of-the-art workshop and multi-omics laboratory, making us an increasingly attractive research partner for prospective local, national and international industrial collaborators. We have notable collaborations with Procter & Gamble (P&G) and members of our advisory board include local innovative architectural practices such as Falkner Brown, national engineering companies such as Cundall and multinationals including IBM.
At the centre of the HBBE is a unique piece of research infrastructure, the OME. The OME is an experimental house built in the heart of the Newcastle University campus behind the Great North Museum and will act as a location for HBBE experiments and as a shop window for our research.


The North East was the centre of the first industrial revolution. Through its network of academics, industrial partners and educational programmes, the HBBE will catalyse the North East as the centre of what is commonly termed, the 4th Industrial Revolution by blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological and changing the way we build and live in our environments.