Tower Colour Zones and Room Numbers Explained

The Tower Complex is divided by colour zones, which provide a starting point for finding a room. A Tower Complex room number is made up of three pieces of information; the block the room is in, followed by the floor and then the room itself. These can all be found within the coloured zones.

The Tower Complex map can be downloaded here (PDF), reading the guidance on this page should help you to understand it better.

Colour Zones and Blocks

The current wayfinding signs emphasise the four coloured zones of the Tower Complex. To find your way to your classroom, take note of the colour zone it is in and use the new site maps in the Tower Complex and at both receptions to help navigate your way to the right colour zone. Once in the correct zone you will find additional room signs to direct you to your room. The colour of classroom door numbers and room signs also illustrates the zone that you are in.

Prior to the introduction of the coloured zones system, the Tower Complex was divided by blocks, based on the original buildings which were joined together to create it. The block abbreviations, which appear at the beginning of all room numbers, are explained below:

AB – Admin Block (Yellow Zone)	GC – Graduate Centre (Blue Zone)

BE – Benwell Road Extension (Green Zone)	T – Tower (Blue Zone)

BEL – Benwell Road Extension Lower (Green Zone)	TM – Tower Main (Blue, Red and Yellow Zones)

BEU – Benwell Road Extension Upper (Green Zone)	TR – The Rocket (Yellow Zone)

BP – P Block (Green Zone)	TS – S Block (Yellow Zone)

BR – Benwell Road (Green Zone)

All BE, BEL, BEU, BP and BR rooms are in the Green Zone. All T and GC rooms are in the Blue Zone. All AB and TR rooms are in the Yellow Zone. TM rooms span the Red, Yellow and Blue Zones.

Floors

The next part of the room number is the floor, which appears immediately before the dash
within the room number. These are “B” for basement, “G” for ground and then “1”, “2” ,”3” etc for first floor, second floor and third floor. Those students who have been taught in a system which uses American English may find this a little confusing at first, because they will probably be used to referring to the ground floor as the 'first floor', the first floor as the 'second floor' and so on.

Numbers

The final part of the room number is the actual number. This is separated from the rest of the room number by the dash. Once you are on the correct floor of the appropriate block, look around for room numbers which are colour co-ordinated with the zone and count along the corridor until you find the correct room. At the tops of stair cases and other suitable places their there may be wall signs pointing to a number of rooms. For example "BEL2-01 to BEL2-16" means that those two rooms and any room number between can be found in the direction indicated by the sign.

Examples

These show the breakdown of some room numbers. The coloured circles and bullet points are for illustrative purposes only and are not related to the coloured zones of the Tower Complex.