The University of Aberdeen Science Building
The University of Aberdeen, founded in 1495, occupies much of Old Aberdeen, a place of extraordinary historic value and architectural quality. The central spine of the old town, the 17th century High Street, remains virtually intact, the university having relegated the disruption of large contemporary development to the old town’s outer edges.
While the old town is characterised by an intimacy of place, connected streets and courts that follow shift in topography, the modern larger scale developments tend to the object in space, seemingly oblivious to neighbourly interactions. The site for the science building sits close to the huge cuboid of the university library by Schmidt Hammer Lassen, a patterned glass chimera.
The new science building mediates between the height of the library and the scale of the historic townscape. In contrast to the glass of the library the new science building adopts a strategy of mass, a stable concrete framework that pursues ideas of decorum and stillness.
The building is ordered in plan, section, and elevation by the laboratory planning module of 3.3metres. The functional requirements e.g., laboratory benching spacing and services strategies, have given rise to the fundamental dimensional framework of the entire building.
The design is characterised by generous, simple spaces that can simply and flexibly accommodate the technical requirements of a number of disciplines, ranging from the specialist heavily serviced spaces to the more lightly serviced general laboratories. The new science teaching laboratories fulfil a university need for advanced laboratory facilities that enable students to access industry standard spaces and equipment. Rather than think in terms of creating facilities for a particular department the space is determined by activity i.e., a particular process that requires a fume cupboard or specialist equipment be that for a chemist, a biologist or a geologist. In approaching the brief through activity rather than by department the facilities are shared across disciplines, thereby reducing duplication of both space and equipment. The resultant building size was therefore reduced significantly from the original departmental brief. Barriers between departments are erased.
The building anticipates change over its lifetime through its rigorous simple planning, devoid of gesture, clear spans, generous floor to floor heights and robust structural loading capacity. It is an architecture that is defined by structure and servicing, solid and void. The mass of the concrete frame and façade respond slowly, dampening and absorbing issues that might affect critical scientific processes and research such as vibration from adjacent main road or temperature fluctuations caused by solar gain.
The plan is straightforward, on each floor two large flexible laboratory spaces are bookended by service areas and escape stairs while a flexible break out or engagement space is created at the centre. These open spaces along with the connecting open central access stair encourage cross discipline conversations through chance and planned meetings and discussion over a coffee and occasionally a glass of wine. The grid of solid and void façade elements is continued through the internal partitions to the central engagement space enabling views through the entire width of the building.
The historic architecture of Aberdeen is characterised by use of local granite. Due to its hardness granite gives rise to buildings that have very sharp almost prismatic and very durable qualities. Buildings belie their age, their complexions still firm and clear. The precast concrete façade panels of the new building enabled the new building to achieve an equivalent accuracy, definition, and quality of finish within the tight budget.
The facades of the new building are defined by the 3.3 m planning grid, giving rise to an alternating vertical rhythm of solid and void. As researchers move through the building their view is always through a full height window giving the impression of much more transparency than is the case. The base grid pattern is layered by a further lighter grid created by a 300 mm wide, offset, projecting concrete nib. The overall concrete façade elements are two storeys high. The offset nibs are mirrored about the second storey, creates a shift in the middle of the facades. This in turn creates a rotation within the façade which becomes most evident at the corners.
