Robert Gordon University 1:200 year floodplain, and may be developed at a future time. The main buildings of the campus are: Until recently the University continued to operated one non-academic facility in the city-centre. The building at Schoolhill is situated next to the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Robert Gordon's College, a prestigious private school which is no longer affiliated to the university but shares a common heritage and motto. The Administration Building is listed as an architecturally significant building, constructed in the Victorian period of carved and ornamented granite, typical of Aberdeen's famous Granite City architecture. In August 2017 all non-academic staff completed
Robert Gordon University future of UK higher education recommended major expansion, which led to the renaming of the institution to Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology to suggest its increasing role in higher education rather than further education. As well as new "plate-glass" universities, reforms following the report created the polytechnics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also created the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) to allow non-university institutions (like the polytechnics and Scottish central institutions) to run programmes that graduated students with CNAA degrees. The Institute's first CNAA degree programmes began in pharmacy in 1967, then in engineering, chemistry and physics