Hundreds of people watched as a £20m flagship science building at the University of Nottingham was destroyed in the early hours of the morning.
At its peak 60 firefighters were on the scene to tackle the flames.
A helicopter tracked the fire from above.
The blaze is understood to have broke out at about 8.45pm on Friday September 12.
The building, empty and still under construction, was part-funded by a £12m donation from pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
Neighbouring buildings were doused with water to prevent the fire from spreading.
A police cordon was also put in place, stretching from Derby Road to Ilkeston Road.
Earlier this morning, the Fire and Rescue Service posted an interview with Incident Commander, Group Manager Joanne Wooler-Ward, explaining what had happened.
She said: "My priority was containment to ensure the fire doesn't spread to surrounding buildings.
"We aren't in a position to say what started it we wont be aware of that but police and our specialist fire investigation officers will be looking at the building when it's safe to enter.
She added: "We will then look more into the investigation phase and work with the police to deal with that element and focus on getting the road open and getting businesses back to normal.
"There is a lot of damage to the building and it won't be in use in the very near future.
"As a service, there were 60 firefighters in attendance who all worked incredibly hard.
"It was a fully developed fire and just credit to those that really did pull out all the stops to stop this fire spreading to any other areas."
The fire service tweeted a message of thanks to all those involved in tackling the blaze.
Thanks for all the good wishes. We had 60 firefighters tackling the Triumph Rd fire in Notts at its height. We'll be there a while yet.
— Notts Fire (@nottsfire) September 13, 2014
