The new research and development building for AstraZeneca is a moment of finesse amidst the gargantuan labs and hospitals of a biomedical campus in southern Cambridge in the UK. Belying all the turmoil that the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company has gone through since it began producing Covid-19 vaccines, the three-story, triangular building, called the Discovery Centre, not only provides 205,000 square feet of lab space to over 2,000 scientists, it acts as an architectural centerpiece for AstraZeneca. Herzog & de Meuron have pulled off several clever moves to make it something special.
Big corporate lab buildings tend to be homogenous: not just from the outside, but internally as well. Herzog & de Meuron’s saw-toothed corona solves both issues. The profile of the steel-framed glazing is oriented to the north to draw in soft natural light, unusual for such a building which might be expected to use electrical illumination throughout. The structure of these skylights—called “northlights” by the architects—continue down the facade, forming a series of 25 steel-framed bays. It’s the arrangement of these bays which lifts the building beyond the mundane.
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