A topping out ceremony has been held at ISG’s Institute of Neurology project.

The team celebrated the highest point of the construction process with client UCL.

The centre on Grays Inn Road, London, aims to accelerate the discovery of treatments for neurological conditions, including dementia – for which there is still no known cure.

The research facility will serve as a hub for the UK Dementia Research Institute and a new home for the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, HQ (UK DRI) and the UCLH National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.

The new centre will house up to 1000 scientists, clinicians and patients together and enable advances to translate from bench to bedside and back again. As well as seven floors of shared labs, workspaces, consulting rooms and collaboration spaces for scientists and support teams, the building will host an MRI suite with five scanners, a 220-seat lecture theatre and a range of shared core facilities, equipment and core technology platforms including microscopy, transcriptomics and tissue processing to encourage new ways of working, collaboration and knowledge-exchange.


The sustainable design, by architects Hawkins\Brown also contains a variety of open and green spaces, including public access areas that the local community can access, as well as a café, open to the public.

ISG Project Director, Francis Thurley said: "It's great for us to be celebrating the topping out of this vitally important project. This will prove to be a vital space scientists, researchers, and clinicians alike and a hub that will help to tackle tackle global challenges for neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and vascular dementia.

"I just want to say thank you to all the team and our partners for their hard work in getting to this important milestone in the build, and we now look forward to the rest of the project."