British Land’s 20 Triton St

The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the biology underlying health and disease.

The institute is in partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, Kings College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London and the Wellcome Trust.

We also helped British Land in the design and delivery of a brand new office space.

The second floor of this prestigious building had been refurbished only to shell & core with some supplementary plant installed.

Bulb were appointed by British Land to design and build high quality, speculative Containment Level 2 laboratories with associated office & meeting space.

Taking on a RIBA Stage 2 Gensler design, Bulb supported by Studio Sutton Architects developed the RIBA Stage 3 and 4 design, of speculative CL2 Laboratories, a Liquid Nitrogen storage area and a basement laboratory support room.

Both laboratories and offices were designed so that they can be easily subdivided into smaller units as required by incoming tenants.

A new external gas store was installed in the building courtyard supplying 3 laboratory gases to each demise.

A key feature of the scheme was an attractive large communal breakout area incorporating the “Crick Hub” and bookable meeting rooms for all tenants.

Bulb were also responsible for developing the M&E strategy from the initial Arup Stage 2 design in order to make the individual spaces ‘lab ready’.

There were a number of unique challenges in doing so, most notably the peculiar shape of the floor plate, coupled with deep structural beams. The existing base build HVAC was adapted to serve all office and communal spaces, whilst the new HVAC plant was used to serve all laboratory spaces.

All of this was undertaken whilst still maintaining the buildings smoke ventilation requirements.

The desire of the client to offer ultimate flexibility proved challenging, but was overcome through the development of a unique high level service tile offering plug in power, data and laboratory gases.

Following a detailed gas detection risk assessment, new gas detection alarms were fitted throughout. To compliment the high quality finish in the corridors, the gas detection traffic light beacons were incorporated into bespoke light fittings.

New electrical systems were designed to offer each tenant their own independent distribution boards.

New energy efficient LED lighting systems with DALI control were installed throughout each area.

The fire alarm system and sprinkler networks were modified to suit the new facility.