Hailed as the 'Quietest Building in the World', this £11 million project provides state-of-the-art specialised laboratories where vibration and acoustic noise levels are among the lowest ever achieved, despite being located in Bristol city centre.
Capita Real estate and infrastructure provided project management services on the building, which was designed by our architects.
The centre, which contains an anechoic chamber, two cleanrooms and wet, optical and low-vibration laboratories, will offer opportunities for the development of future computing, communications and health technologies, as well as advanced materials such as those used in the aerospace industry.
The basement houses the ‘low noise’ area with a suite of ultra-low vibration nanoscience laboratories which are anchored to the rock below. The building also benefits from access to techniques and imaging equipment, much of which has been developed in-house, which allow researchers to observe, understand, manipulate and characterise nanostructures and reactions, both chemical and biological, and to develop new synthesised materials.
It has a unique, purpose-designed environment in which a multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary research community drawn from science, engineering, and medicine can be fostered and thrive through stimulating interactions and the exchange of ideas. It provides a focus of expertise for leading scientists and engineers from the University, the UK and across the world, to work and interact.
Symbolism is used in the building form, elevations and atrium dome which is shaped as a ‘bucky ball’. The ‘bucky ball’ is so called because it resembles a geodesic sphere, a molecular structure made popular in the 1940s by American designer Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller.
High quality materials have been used throughout including curved Portuguese limestone on the main elevation set out in the Fibonacci Series. Self-cleaning glass has also been installed which uses Nano particles to break down dirt which is then washed away by rainwater.
Capita's Iain Martin said: “The NS&QI building is a beautiful and complex building amalgamating both art and science in a harmonious composition. It is technically complex and has exceeded expectations by becoming “the quietest building in the world” in terms of vibration performance. For the scientists the building is beautiful for this reason alone!”
The unique environment offered by the NSQI will allow experiments to be undertaken at levels of precision surpassing that achieved in other laboratories around the world. The laboratories are already being used to carry out some groundbreaking research:
In order to understand how the material is able to do this, state-of-the-art equipment has been installed in one of the NSQI ‘quiet’ laboratories. It can study the electronic properties of the material by looking at individual atoms. The research is being sponsored by the energy company E.ON, to the tune of £1million.
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Across the UK, our clients rely on us every day to de-risk, simplify, and un-complicate things. How? With the right team and the right solution – on time, and on budget.
Working with public and private sector organisations, we provide specialist project and cost management, engineering and design, health and safety, and environmental solutions. We do things differently, specialising in infrastructure – the physical networks which keep the country moving, as well as the social infrastructure which creates communities people want to be a part of – and in building solutions, from architectural innovation to sustainable and technologically advanced design and delivery.