King opens humanities centre and space hub

King Charles III officially opened a major new university building and a space and defence hub during a day of engagements focused on education, innovation and sustainability.

The King was serenaded by a choir of schoolchildren as he marked the opening of the University of Oxford's new £185m Stephen A Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.

He then travelled to Didcot to launch the UK Space and Defence Gateway at the Harwell Space Cluster.

At Oxford, the King was welcomed by the university's Chancellor, Lord William Hague, and donor Stephen Schwarzman, whose foundation funded the building.

A choir of local secondary school pupils performed Claudio Monteverdi's Cantate Domino before the King toured the facility and met academics, students and community groups.

During a short speech, he said it gave him "great pleasure" to celebrate the opening of the building, which brings the university's humanities departments together under one roof.

He visited the Sohmen Concert Hall, a 500-seat auditorium that is the world's first Passivhaus-standard concert venue, making it highly energy efficient.

A class of primary school children gathered in the heat to wave Union flags as the King left the building.

The King later travelled to Harwell, where he officially opened the UK Space and Defence Gateway, a new hub designed to strengthen collaboration across the space and defence sectors.

He unveiled a sustainable plaque to mark the occasion at the Gateway, which sits at the heart of the Harwell Space Cluster.

The facility is aligned with the King's Sustainable Markets Initiative's Astra Carta, a framework launched when he was Prince of Wales to promote sustainability in the space sector.

During his visit, the King toured RAL Space, the UK's National Space Laboratory, which supports work on climate monitoring, biodiversity and environmental resilience.

The Harwell Space Cluster is Europe's largest concentration of space organisations, supporting more than 120 space firms and more than 330 defence and security organisations.

At the Gateway, he viewed demonstrations from leading space companies and the European Space Agency before meeting representatives from industry, government, academia and the investment community.

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