50 PROJECT REPORT: EDUCATION & RESEARCH FACILITIES
All photos @ Greg Holmes
PROJECT FACTFILE
Client: The University of Manchester Architects: Mecanoo (lead architect), Penoyre & Prasad (refurbishment and extension of Odd Fellows Hall), BDP (detailed design) Project managers: Buro Four Briefing consultant: iDEA Structural and M&E consultant: Arup Cost consultants: Arcadis Design and management co-ordination: AECOM Floor area: 81,000 m2 Laser labs area: 1162 m2 Chemical labs area: 2,412 m2 Biological labs area: 630 m2 Characterisation labs/ EM-Suite area: 1,141 m2
the departments that was desired by the client, says Otto, giving the example of a research project to develop ‘Formula Student’ racing cars: “Students will have the opportunity to work across disciplines.” A car being worked on will be on show within a specific ‘project space’ within the Makerspace, a far cry from the hidden-away areas they previously would have used. Many of the workshops in existing facilities were below ground due to the heavy loadings, but here the designers “made a lot of effort to make those spaces the most visible.” Useful adjacencies have been explored in the design – for example robotics is located between the departments of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering and Electrical and Electronic Engineering, enabling both to work together in one ‘crossover’ area, where barriers can be “dissolved.” Each of the departments’ glazed atria are visually connected with adjacent areas: “From one you’ll be looking into a chemical laboratory, and from another you’ll be looking into a flight simulator, from another a dry teaching lab dedicated to tinkering with small electronics, says Otto. “Although similar in expression, each atrium will be given an identity because of everything that’s going on around it,” he adds.
The 8 metre-wide staircases that climb
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through the atria have a large landing providing an observation platform to see what’s happening in the ground floor workshops below. They also provide for student and academic interaction and informal work space; nearby each are computer clusters where students may be developing code for the equipment they can see being tested below.
Permeability
The other buildings in the scheme help connect MEC Hall to the city fabric, but also provide “interesting permeability of the city block” for pedestrians, says Otto. A “logical” route is created between Piccadilly Station to the north, and the university’s south campus, for instance. A key example of how the scheme interacts with its context is the cafe at the south west corner of MEC Hall, which links to a new public square via a colonnade. Movable partitions can open it up into a lecture space even enabling academics to “literally bring a lecture out onto the street,” says Otto, possibly even displaying large equipment such as an aero engine which a standard lecture theatre could not. This tantalising prospect shows how this barrier-breaking project will be a literal platform for showing UK innovation and education to the world.
ADF MARCH 2020
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