ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Developing facilities to meet science’s shifting needs
Associate directors at Arup – which offers a range of multidisciplinary design, planning, engineering, consultancy, and technical professional services, Malcolm Turpin, Catherine Wells, and Steven Berry, and director Jennifer DiMambro, consider some of the particular challenges of designing health and scientific research buildings.
Science and medical research are advancing at a phenomenal speed. The past decade alone has witnessed scientists cloning human stem cells, creating fully functioning bionic limbs, and completing the first human face transplant. Scientific research is helping people to live longer, and making lives more fulfilling, and is also becoming increasingly important to the economic wellbeing of countries and cities. The UK is currently ranked second in the world for research and development (R&D) innovation, a primary driver of inward investment. Every pound invested in R&D returns 20-30p annually, building a knowledge economy which supports a third of our businesses and pays 40% higher than the average wage. With such substantial rewards on offer, the competition between countries wishing to lead within this field is fierce. Attracting the best scientists undertaking the most lucrative work depends on
Jennifer DiMambro. Steven Berry.
providing state-of-the-art research facilities. With science evolving at such speed, this leaves institutions with a significant challenge – how to cater for the ever-changing needs of science, without constantly channelling hefty sums into building renovations, or indeed entirely new buildings. The answer lies in adaptability; creating buildings that can evolve and flex to remain at the forefront of medical innovation. This adaptability is characterised in three of our most recent projects in London, where we have
Malcolm Turpin.
Catherine Wells.
contributed our engineering and project management advice – The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, The Francis Crick Institute, and Guy’s Cancer Centre.
The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre Arup was engaged to start work on the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London in the Autumn of 2009, providing structural and building services engineering and a number of specialist consultancy services. The Centre was created through a partnership between the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to establish a new Research Centre in Neural Circuits and Behaviour. The neuroscientists working in the new facility are able to use state-of- the-art techniques in molecular and cellular biology, imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioural science, supported by computational modelling, to investigate how brain circuits process information to create neural representations and guide behaviour. The 14,000 m2
facility is located The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London. 42 Health Estate Journal April 2017
at University College London in Fitzrovia, and comprises five levels of above ground accommodation, and two levels of basement facilities. Arup provided advice on all engineering disciplines and specialist consultancy for the project, with the new facility completed in late 2015. Building in flexibility was raised as a key concern from the outset; firstly because neuroscience is a rapidly developing branch of science, and, secondly, because the scientists who would be working in the facility were not identified until much later in the programme. This strategy may seem
© Ian Ritchie Architects
© Daniel Imade, Arup
© Thomas Graham, Arup
© Thomas Graham, Arup
© Daniel Imade, Arup
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