Plans have been announced for a �36 million graduate centre in London’s East End with lecture theatres and accommodation.

Then centre is planned at the University of London’s Queen Mary College campus in Mile End as part of an expansion scheme.

The new building will have lecture theatres, teaching and office space, reading rooms, cafeteria, trading floor, a 24-hour IT lab and even an under-cover winter garden. It will also have 123 en-suite residential rooms and one-bed flats.

Queen Mary’s Principal Simon Gaskell said: “One of our objectives is a thriving postgraduate population—numbers have risen rapidly in recent years.

“Our postgraduates keep Queen Mary’s at the forefront of research and are our next generation of leading academics.”

The structure behind the Queens’ Building on the site of the recently-demolished Chemistry building could be ready by 2015.

Improvement works are also planned to the facades of the historic People’s Palace and the Queens’ Building. which coincides with the 125th anniversary of the college later this year.

The scheme includes a combined heat and power plant that will also feed eight other buildings on campus, producing electricity using a gas engine that will also provide a large amount of heat as a by-product, generating a third of Queen Mary’s total carbon reduction target by 2015.