Seven years after it opened, and many millions of pounds later, the Wellcome Trust has put a new plank in its ambitious Wellcome Collection building in central London – with a new development that includes space for a controversial kind of research.

The trust coined the term "sciart" in 1996, and is now taking things to another level with backing for interdisciplinary research into science, humanities and the arts. A bespoke space for this research, called The Hub, will open its doors in October this year as part of a £17.5 million development of the Wellcome Collection building (see artist's impression, above). It will host a multidisciplinary team headed by social scientist Felicity Callard from Durham University.

There have been many attempts to bridge the gaps between arts and science; gaps made famous by C. P. Snow in his famous "Two Cultures" Rede lecture in 1959. Often these attempts involve the kind of intellectual bravura exemplified by John Brockman's Third Culture, or take the form of residencies for artists in scientific establishments, such as the [email protected] [4] project. ...