Major redevelopment work is underway at the BBC's most famous building, Broadcasting House in the heart of London.

"We're restoring our original home and expanding it to create the largest live broadcast centre ever" - BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson

The new W1 centre will be a dynamic new home for all the BBC's national radio networks, as well as a focus for the BBC's national and international news operations, bringing the World Service and the domestic news service together in one venue for the first time.

This new building will host one of the world's largest live newsrooms.

At any one time, over 10 million people across the UK will watch or listen to output from the new W1 centre, and every week at least 150 million people worldwide will tune into the World Service.

Two-phase project

The project is planned in two phases: the first phase is the refurbishment of the old Broadcasting House, which has just been completed. Live broadcasting begins in Summer 2006.

Work on phase two, the creation of a new combined news centre, has already begun. The whole project will reach completion in 2010.

Radio 2 has already re-occupied a refurbished Western House and began broadcasting from it recently. Listeners rang into the station to say that the sound was better!

The aims of the project:

• To contribute a major new landmark building in central London
• To create a flexible building of real architectural merit, for the BBC's role in a digital age and to provide state-of-the-art facilities for BBC Radio.
• To integrate national and international BBC journalism into one combined news centre.
• To develop open, flexible and creative workspaces for BBC staff in News, Radio & Music and World Service.
• To enhance public access for the BBC's audiences and visitors, including a public piazza, radio theatre, new BBC shop and café, and a new exhibition/interactive area.
• To help to rationalise the BBC's property strategy in London into three main centres: Broadcasting House, Media Village and Television Centre in West London.

The new building

The new building will contain six television studios and 140 acoustic spaces, as well as specially conceived zones for creative discussion and interaction.

Other features will include: huge atria, glass facades and state-of-the-art air conditioning which will make it a comfortable and light working environment; food outlets and break-out areas located across the complex; glass lifts and wide, spacious walkways to aid passage through and around the building.

The BBC's traditional radio centre is now transformed into a new tapeless environment.

For the first time, programmes are digital from start to finish in the production process and BBC audio content can be re-versioned for changing and different audiences: for broadcasting, podcasting and beyond.

There will be 27 new, acoustically improved studio spaces located inside the rebuilt 'studio tower', completely resistant to tube noise and disturbance – creating a better listening experience for audiences.

There will be more flexibility in the use of space by transforming the dark cellular offices of the past into open plan workspaces. Creative links will be nurtured by the close proximity of production teams to studios.

More space (four storeys) will be created at the top of building, following the demolition of the previous sloping roof.

Navigation around the building will be enhanced via innovative use of colour and there will be increased resilience and efficiency by dual power supplies and cooling.

New W1 public space

This new development aims to enhance the northern corner of Oxford Street, positioned at the crossroads between the commercial centre of Regent Street and Oxford Street, the media and fashion zone of Soho, and the academic environment of the Great Portland Street complex of roads.

Within the W1 centre, there will also be genuinely public spaces – providing performance zones, cafés, exhibition/art installations, a children's media workshop and space for general interaction.

For the first time, the BBC in central London will have a public face accessible to all – where broadcaster and audience can meet directly.

Landmark architecture

There is a genuine desire with this project to create a building of major architectural and artistic vision.

Using a combination of glass and Portland stone, the building will echo the original Broadcasting House and is also sympathetic to John Nash's All Souls Church which flanks it.

All restoration work is being done in partnership with English Heritage. Original interiors will be painstakingly restored including oak panelling, statues, plaster friezes, mosaic flooring etc.

The exterior façade and statues will be cleaned but will maintain an appropriate patina of age. Each heritage space will be reinvented for appropriate contemporary use, so that it stays part of the ongoing life of the building.

This project will also be supported by innovative public art commissions – across painting, sculpture, lighting, video and audio.

Key facts

• The architects will have produced an estimated 10,000 drawings by the end of the project
• 64,000 tonnes of debris will be removed from the site
• Around 17,000 lorry loads of rubbish will be taken from BH
• During excavation, work will be taking place 4 metres from the Victoria tube line
• There will be six new studios for television news
• The new News studio will be one of the largest live newsrooms in the world
• There will be 140 acoustic spaces for Radio & Music, News and World Service
• There will be 10,000 miles of cabling in the new building