THE DISCOVERY CENTRE, CAMBRIDGE 9
THE DISCOVERY CENTRE CAMBRIDGE
Discovery mission
The Discovery Centre in Cambridge marks a new era for AstraZeneca, a remarkable research facility and headquarters by Herzog & de Meuron that combines boundary-pushing design and sustainability with collaboration. Roseanne Field reports.
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n the heart of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), on what was once an empty piece of land, now sits AstraZeneca’s impressive The DISCovery Centre, known as the DISC, alluding to its triangular-disc form. It is designed to be the research centre for this global organisation. The British-Swedish based pharmaceutical giant gained an even higher UK profi le during the pandemic after it developed a Covid vaccine with the University of Oxford. The company was looking to establish a strategic research and development (R&D) centre in the UK alongside its existing centres in Gothenburg, Sweden and Maryland in the US. With the company investing $7bn a year in R&D – and a large portion of this taking place in the UK – it was a logical step to invest in a centre that would include the latest in technology and design. However, the result, designed by architecture fi rm Herzog & de Meuron and built by Mace, would also become AstraZeneca’s corporate headquarters. As well as its existing research centres in Sweden and the US, the company has an R&D presence in over 40 countries globally, and development facilities in China and Japan.
A catalyst for collaboration Locating DISC in the Cambridge
Biomedical Campus made sense from several angles. The CBC forms part of a wider development known as the Cambridge Southern Fringe Area, and is intended to become a leading hub for biomedical research and development, home to companies and institutions from the healthcare, education, science and research sectors. AstraZeneca previously operated an R&D facility in Alderley Park in Macclesfi eld, a semi-rural site that typifi ed the former preferred location of pharmaceutical companies, before a shift occurred to R&D sites being located closer to life science ‘hubs.’
The client deliberately placed the building at the centre of the CBC, to maximise the organisation’s ability to foster collaboration across the campus. AstraZeneca hopes its location will make it a “key point of idea exchange,” and allow it to build on existing collaborations within the Cambridge Life Science community, including the University of Cambridge’s School of Clinical Medicine, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Cancer Research UK. The DISC’s neighbours also include two leading hospitals – the Royal Papworth Hospital and Addenbrooke’s Hospital – and numerous research institutions and biotech fi rms. In total more than 400 companies
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