Smart building to reflect uni’s future
PLANNED DESIGN OF NEW COMPUTER SCIENCE FACILITY HAS HI-TECH THEME
HERE’S a first glimpse at how a cutting-edge, £58m Newcastle University building will look when work on it is completed in August.
The Urban Sciences building is part of the university’s Science Central development.
It will feature a striking design reflecting the building’s future use as the home of the Computer Science faculty.
The new build forms part of the £350m regeneration of the former Tyne Brewery and one-time colliery site in Newcastle city centre.
Created by Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson, the design is a map of the university’s website – a single point in time capturing every link and data point that a user has to navigate when searching for information about Newcastle University.
Its intricate external design is set to be matched by a hi-tech interior.
Walls, windows and fittings will be connected by thousands of sensors which university scientists will use to help them understand how to create more sustainable and efficient buildings in the future.
There, new energy systems, novel materials and smart engineering will all be trialled.
Describing the three, overlapping layers of his exterior design, Newcastle academic Dr Dade-Robertson says the aim was to arrange the elements to give balance across the façade whilst creating something geometrically distinctive.
“I didn’t want a homogeneous pattern – like a piece of wallpaper,” he said.
“Instead, the final effect is almost as if the building itself is cutting through an invisible data network revealing its complexity on the facade.”
Dr Dade-Robertson said the “web of connections” also represented the importance of collaboration in academic research.
Prof John Fitzgerald, who will be the head of the School of Computing when it moves into the building in August, said: “Fifty years ago, Newcastle University awarded some of the first degrees in computing.
“Then, computers were rare and big beasts. Now almost every aspect of our lives depends on communicating digital devices.
“As hundreds of us come and go through it every day, Martyn’s powerful work on the glass façade of the Urban Sciences Building will remind us – students, teachers, researchers and professional staff – of the scale, potential and fragility of the digital world in which we work and for which we have responsibility.”
The building will be the second of the university’s buildings to be completed on the Science Central site.