Over the last few months, thanks to the great work of the Royal Society of Chemistry and their #morechemlabs campaign, we’ve been digging deep into a surprisingly difficult question: what exactly does a chemistry founder need from a lab?

Everyone talks about “lab space” for innovators, but almost no one talks about chemistry-ready lab space.

And that distinction matters.

Many of the “labs” marketed to early-stage founders simply aren’t suitable for real chemistry.

They’re biology-optimised, infrastructure light and they rarely have externally vented extract to support a fume cupboard. They look like labs, but they often cannot safely support the workflows chemistry founders actually rely on.

We’re trying to take a different approach.

At One Portal Way in North Acton (Opening Summer 2026), we’re building 24 new labs intended to support a wide range of disciplines: biotech, cleantech, materials, chemistry and more.

Every one of our labs includes an externally vented extraction duct from day one. This ducting is capable of supporting at least one 1500 mm externally vented fume cupboard.

Not a benchtop accessory. Not a recirculating cabinet. A real chemistry fume cupboard, the bare minimum (we think! But please tell us otherwise) for anyone working with solvents, reagents, exothermic reactions or the everyday realities of synthetic chemistry.

We’ve learned that this level of infrastructure is surprisingly rare.

Many of the new commercial lab buildings and science coworking spaces simply weren’t built for it. Retrofitting is expensive. Duct runs are complex. Landlords don’t love the disruption. As a result, chemistry founders are pushed into spaces that look like labs but they often aren’t capable of supporting the work required to build real, defensible IP.

We want to change that and remove the friction that slows early-stage innovators.

As we’re finalising the buildout at One Portal Way, there’s still time to accommodate what chemistry founders consider essential: if you tell us what you need, we can hopefully factor it in.

This means: no retrofitting costs, no extraction approvals, no “maybe in six months.

If you’re a chemistry founder, please get in touch: tell us what “chemistry ready” means for you, so we can build it.

Sciopolis - 1 Portal Way opens in June 2026. (come have a look, we run tours every Tuesday)