WORK on Oxford University’s new £40m physics building in Parks Road is about to begin.

The new Beecroft Building will take two years to complete and the work will result in the closure of a small area of the University Parks.

It will be located between University Parks and the Museum of Natural History and when it opens in mid-2017 it will be its first new physics research building for 50 years.

University spokesman Matt Pickles said: “Safety hoardings will be in place until building work is completed. This will mean a small portion of the University Parks will be behind hoardings and a short section of the parks’ footpath at the Keble Gate entrance will be temporarily re-routed.

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“Once work is completed, the parks land will be re-incorporated and new bed borders created.”

The parks’ main entrance, Keble Gate, will stay open but will be repositioned by 2017 in a move the university says will improve the entrance and views of the parks.

The scheme is part of the university’s ongoing £1bn project to transform its science area in a programme expected to stretch over two decades.

The physics building will have five levels above ground with two basement levels and a landscaped courtyard to the south.

Prof John Wheater of the Department of Physics, which currently employs 470 people, said: “It will contain state-of-the art labs, comparable to the very best worldwide, and will enable us to do research that is impossible in our current facilities.

“We will set up a permanent exhibition space in the light and airy entrance hall of the new building for a rotating science exhibition that will be open to the public.

“Visitors will be able to view equipment from major experiments and material developed for events.”

Prof Wheater said the building would generate millions in new funding as well as creating new jobs. The Government had already awarded £38m to develop a technology quantum computer over the next five years, with the new building essential for the later stages of the programme.

Research will focus on how viruses and DNA structures self assemble, dark matter and how galaxies form.