Alan Turing Building
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Maths and Science building for the University of Manchester that separates it's departments into three distinct blocks divided by two streets – one exterior and one interior
The complex brings together three schools that have never shared a building before: The School of Mathematics, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and the Photon Science Institute. The astronomers have clear glass offices running off corridors, while the mathematicians opted for opaque glazed pods. They each have two floors straddling the four-storey atrium.
A partition across this ground-floor area incorporates seating and is painted the same shade of yellow carried throughout the building and into the mathematician’s pods.
The third block houses the photon science research labs, notably still and inert for a space so close to a main road. Unlike the other two structures, this is brick-clad and almost windowless on the ground floor. At this level it is not so much a building as a research instrument. The Mathematics block is connected to photon sciences by a glazed bridge.
Zinc panels and running window slots present a consistent horizontality modulated by the projecting cantilevers, which make the 17,000m2 building feel remarkably light on its feet.
Data
- Begun: Nov 2005
- Completed: Aug 2007
- Floor area: 16,577m2
- Sector: Education
- Total cost: £43.4M
- Tender date: Jul 2005
- Address: University of Manchester, Upper Brook Street, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom
Professional Team
- Architect: Sheppard Robson
- Client: University of Manchester
- Structural engineer: Faber Maunsell
- Quantity surveyor: MDA Consulting
- Planning supervisor: Faber Maunsell
- Main contractor: HBG Construction
- Project manager: Capita Symonds Architecture
- Services engineer: Jacobs Engineering
Suppliers
- Photovoltaics: Solar Technologies
- Curtain walling: Dane
- Steel supplier: Elland Steel
- Concrete: John Dole
- Joinery: R&R construction
- Internal partitions: Komfort
- Ceilings: Sound Ceilings
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