Brilliant buildings attract the brightest minds

Brilliant buildings attract the brightest mindsBringing together the world’s great scientific minds in a “cathedral for science” at London’s Francis Crick Institute demanded a creative approach to design and delivery, says Turner & Townsend’s Matt Billingham.The Institute was founded by six of the UK’s most successful scientific and academic organisations: the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, University College London, Imperial College London and King’s College London.”The business activities undertaken within the building itself are exciting. The Wellcome Trust, for example, is responsible for mapping around a third of the human genome,” explains Billingham, managing director at Turner & Townsend in Western Australia.”The Institute’s director, Paul Nurse, calls the building a ‘cathedral for science’. Around 12 researchers across many disciplines will work together, and Dr Jim Smith, director at the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research, has said that if any institute were to be able to solve the problem of cancer and other diseases then it would be The Crick,” Billingham explains.Billingham will be sharing his insights into the project at The Property Congress in October. Turner & Townsend carried out a suite of commercial management services on the project including cost and lifecycle optioneering that utilised 3D building information modelling plus procurement and change management.Billingham says the project team recognised that this was a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to participate in a project that could make a huge impact on our understanding of how life works”. Maximising the development potential of the site would deliver a building that reinforced the Institute’s goal of ‘discovery without boundaries’.Around a third of the Institute is below ground, providing 24,000 sqm of space for specialist containment suites and vibration sensitive equipment. The four basement levels were built top-down using plunge piles with interstitial floor slabs hung from the floors above.”The basement was a huge undertaking. At 17m deep, it was constructed on a central London site with St Pancras station on one side, the British Library on another, and the other two sides flanked by residential buildings.”The modern building was designed to respond to its surroundings. The vaulted roofline and terracotta cladding of the Institute mirror the 1868 Barlow train shed at the adjacent St Pancras station. The curving roofline conceals the large-scale ventilation plant and a photovoltaic array.The total internal floor area is around 86,000 sqm, including almost 30,000 sqm of laboratories. This includes a massive four kilometres of laboratory bench space.Large windows and soaring glass atria maximise natural light and sightlines throughout the building, encouraging collaboration and sharing of ideas.The building will be home to “lots of sensitive scientific equipment”, Billingham says. “The team had to consider how to ensure that magnetic fields generated by imaging equipment, for example, won’t be impacted by planned tram lines and traffic.”The building’s design was developed in consultation with scientists and community groups.”The lifecycle of a project like this might be anything up to seven years from the initial brief – or even longer, depending on the scale of the building. The requirements of researchers at the start of the project won’t be the same when they move in, and what’s cutting edge now won’t be in seven years’ time.”Billingham says getting the right balance between adaptability and flexibility of the research spaces was mission critical. “A fully flexible space is very expensive – as it means you can plug in a sink or biosafety cabinet anywhere in the building. Researchers like the idea that they could leave on a Friday afternoon and come back to a newly configured lab space on Monday morning. It’s a ‘nice to have’ but prohibitively expensive.”We went for adaptability instead. This means a certain amount of fixed service lines, and an optimal mix of adaptable and flexible spaces to get the cost balance right. This approach enabled the project to deliver more from the available budget.”The Francis Crick Institute is already attracting the world’s attention.”The number of applications for research posts has far outstripped what the building has capacity to provide – and it hasn’t even opened yet.”Matt Billingham will be sharing the secrets of the Francis Crick Institute during the ‘World’s Best Projects’ at The Property Congress. More than 6 delegates will attend this year’s SOLD OUT event from 20-22 October at Hamilton Island. www.thepropertycongress.com.au