The centre will be among the largest in the world. Credit: J. PIPERGER/WADSWORTH3D/UKCMRI

As the United Kingdom grinds through its worst recession in decades, British researchers have revealed ambitious plans for a massive biomedical science complex in central London.

The UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) is the most significant scientific development in Britain "for a generation", says Paul Nurse, Nobel-prizewinning cell biologist and chair of the project's scientific planning committee. "If we get this right, it will send a message to the rest of the world that the UK is serious about science," says Nurse.

Detailed plans for the building, which will be located near London's St Pancras International station and house 1,500 staff, were unveiled last week. The open-plan design reflects what Nurse calls his "somewhat unusual" ambitions for how research will be carried out. To encourage collaboration, Nurse says that the centre will forgo traditional academic departments for multidisciplinary 'interest groups' that are set up by the researchers themselves. Nurse hopes that the different teams will essentially drive their own research programmes.

The grandiose plan will not come cheap. On top of construction costs of £600 million (US$890 million), the centre will cost £100 million per year to operate. The stiff price tag comes at a difficult time for several of the project's backers. The UK Medical Research Council (MRC), which will pay roughly half the construction costs, is expected to have its funding squeezed in the coming government budget, and University College London (UCL), which will contribute £46 million to the building, has recently made voluntary redundancies in preparation for tight times ahead.

The new UK coalition government recently announced that it will pay its portion of the project on a year-by-year basis instead of as a single lump sum, but both the MRC and UCL say that they remain fully committed to the project. Plans for the new facility will be submitted to local authorities in August and, if approved, construction could begin early next year.