ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
surprising, but it is increasingly common due to the speed of scientific discovery and the global nature of the sector. People move around a lot, and scientists bring with them preferred ways of working, which need to be accommodated for in their lab environment.
Scientists’ input
Creating this kind of bounded flexibility depended on working closely with the client, architect, and specialist groups, through a number of information- gathering activities. Firstly, UCL nominated a neuroscientist – the kind of person the Centre would want to attract – who collected information from the scientific community and obtained specifications on areas unique to laboratory design – such as gas usage, for example. Our engineers also toured existing facilities, with the scientists indicating factors that would be important to them, and where and how they would change these. As the design developed, the architects ran a series of ‘day in the life’ exercises with the client team to ensure that the proposed spaces operated as intended.
Structuring flexibility
The need for flexibility has been a key driver in the structural and services design for the Centre – impacting every element of the build, right down to the structural frame. After a series of consultations, we opted for a concrete frame due to its vibration-dampening capabilities and adaptability. Concrete allowed the use of flat slabs, which gives great flexibility to the servicing, and optimises the internal configuration. Within this frame, the laboratory spaces have been uniquely structured to
Located close to London’s King’s Cross station, the new Francis Crick Institute needed to cater for the interests of ‘a unique partnership of six of the UK’s most successful scientific and academic organisations’.
accommodate a broad range of activities. There are 12 identical laboratory modules, each laid out over two floors with the same services arrangement. This is pre- fabricated, repeatable, and can be adapted very quickly. Ventilation is critical in laboratory facilities, and this needed to be fine-tuned to cope with the demands of different zones now and how these might change in the future. At this point the build very much became about balancing flexibility and capital expenditure. Complete flexibility is unrealistically costly, so it is about understanding where this is necessary, where it is optional, and the parameters you need to operate between.
A ‘step-change’ in approach This is a mindset that carried through to our approach to environmental controls. Laboratories can be incredibly carbon- intensive because of the amount of air you drive through the facility. We wanted to challenge this in the Centre by installing a new demand control system. This collects packets of air and sends them back to a central sensor bank, which then assesses levels of total volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. The vast majority of the time, a laboratory environment is no more contaminated than an office building environment. This control system monitors the air quality, driving energy efficiency by only increasing the airflow when this is actually needed. It presents a step-change in approach, and is a model we are now seeing a number of clients looking to replicate.
At the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, there are 12 identical laboratory modules, each laid out over two floors with the same services arrangement.
The Francis Crick Institute Like the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, flexibility was key to the design of The Francis Crick Institute (HEJ – February 2017), which opened its doors in London last autumn. While the Institute’s new building would be completely new, it needed to cater for the interests of a unique partnership of six of the UK’s most successful scientific and academic organisations. The vision was to break the mould of scientists working independently, and instead embed and foster a spirit of collaboration and a multidisciplinary approach to scientific research. Again, the Institute wanted to attract the best and brightest people by accommodating the science of the moment, and creating an environment where ground-breaking research could be quickly translated into treatments.
April 2017 Health Estate Journal 43
© Arup.
© Laing O’Rourke.
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