Below : Boys enter The Laboratory for the first time (left), the ‘Dragon’s Curve’ terracotta pattern (right) and one of the new bright, open classrooms (opposite page).
The 24 visors attached to the outside of the building, each comprising 112 terracotta ‘baguettes’, help to reduce over-heating and glare in the laboratories Up to four per cent of the electrical power is supplied by 50 photovoltaic solar panels on the roof; the maximum available space on the roof has been used for solar panels The thermal properties of the building are such that less than 15 per cent of the heating supplied by the new boilers is required for the new building; the remaining <85 per cent goes to the Barry Buildings Cooling of the building is achieved by ground source water pumped from a borehole, which is 122m deep; water at 12.7 o C runs through kilometres of piping buried in the concrete of each floor before being pumped back to another ‘sink’ borehole by the War Memorial. This is known as an ‘open loop’ system
integrated deep within it. For example, satisfied only with an environmental regulation standard of ‘Excellent’, the College took the decision to install a Thermally Activated Cooling System that pumps water through pipes from 122 metres underground, through chalk and clay, to extract heat from the building. Although cheaper in the long term, the system was expensive to build and the drilling process didn’t come without its problems. At 119 metres below the surface, the enormous £48,000 drill got stuck. To solve this issue, a pump had to be brought down from Wales to blast out chalk and flint residue 14 feet into the air. Ascending onto the roof gives us a view of the College few have glimpsed, but also the sight of yet more high-tech equipment. This includes solar panels, which will provide four per cent of the building’s electricity, and a mechanical plant ventilation system. There are also plans to have a powerful telescope on the roof as well (I sense another society in the making). It is also interesting to observe how much science is being used in the construction of the building itself. As we pass through the central atrium, the heart of the building, a vacuum machine is being used to lift a pane of glass off the ground – a process only made possible by scientific endeavour exploring the properties of matter. Then, as we move into one of the classrooms walled by glass, one can only imagine the research undergone into the interaction of light with other materials to have created the tinted windows allowing clear vision looking out, but dimming the clarity when looking in. It’s this sort of wonder that the building itself feels designed to provoke.
‘The quality is remarkable. Every detail is covered,’ says Mr Yiend. He explains that the Master was keen to ‘break the artificial divide between art and science’, and deliberately artistic concepts are carefully woven into many of the building’s design aspects. The architects have embraced the direct juxtaposition of tradition and modernity created by The Laboratory’s proximity to the Barry Buildings: its reflective three-storey pane of glass that looks out onto the face of the school, coupled with the distinctive terracotta cladding, allows The Laboratory to appear ‘influenced by the Barry Buildings’ yet ‘a statement in its own right’. This warm red-brick feel is also mirrored by the use of light wood for the inner-chamber, intended to contrast the bright, open classrooms. Even the apparently random terracotta pattern has a story behind it. Designed by the esteemed sculptor Peter Randall Page, the pattern, known as the ‘Dragon’s Curve’ was discovered in the 1960s by the biologist Aristid Lindenmayer whilst attempting to replicate various shapes of nature in an algorithm. Each individual tile had to be drawn up, numbered, sent to a production company in Belgium, and signed off. Today, the algorithm is used in music and physics, and can also be seen in Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park , where a number of pages are dedicated to explaining how it can be reproduced. ‘I’ve been with it all the way through, and you don’t always know how it’s going to turn out’, Mr Yiend tells me as my tour draws to a close. We can now say with a degree of certainty that Phase One has turned out triumphant in all manners of architectural ambition, artistic subtlety and scientific wonder. We wait for the completion of Phase Two with anticipation.
The Phase One building is 1170m 2 in area
It has taken 295 working days to build (construction work started on 3rd Feburary 2014)
It is supported on 168 piles to a depth of between 29m and 16m
It weighs 4.4 kilotons (3.7kt for concrete frame; 700t for superimposed loads: cladding, partitions, floor/ceiling finishes and services) Some 97,756 worker hours have gone into the building work onsite, and 48 trades have been involved; these hours do not include those spent on professional services, design etc. offsite The 18 laboratories and 3 preparation rooms are largely identical in terms of space and proportion, allowing flexibility for reorganisation in the future The external cladding pattern was generated using a 3D modelling software called Rhino, working alongside an algorithmic modelling application called Grasshopper Each of the 143 external cladding panels is unique and had to be cast individually in Belgium; there are six different shades in the 4,164 terracotta tiles
The borehole water was originally rainwater which is two years old by the time it reaches Dulwich
The glass skylight in the James Caird Hall above the lifeboat is 13m at its highest point. The waves faced by Shackleton and his crew were up to 18m high Endurance, Shackleton’s three-masted barquentine, at a length of 144 feet, would comfortably fit in the space of the James Caird Hall and the corresponding paved area outside
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