Faculty of Engineering / Te Herenga Mātai Pūkaha (B405)
University of Auckland - Auckland
NZIA Auckland Architecture Awards 2020 - Education Award & Resene Colour Award
Property Council of NZ, Property Industry Awards 2020 - Education Property Award of Excellence
Lab-works Architecture, working in collaboration with overall project architect Jasmax, were the specialist designers for the “wet laboratories” in this project, to upgrade and replace the existing Engineering School buildings at the University of Auckland City Campus.
The upper three floors of this twelve-story building are for laboratory-based research, with benching based on a modular layout. Services are suspended from above, allowing for flexibility: benching can be reconfigured or removed if research changes in the future. The laboratories allow for multiple different research streams: from chemistry and material engineering, small scale process engineering, to environmental research.
The lower levels contain teaching laboratories, designed to be highly flexible “plug and play” spaces. Services connections were set up at central points within the laboratories and mobile benching allows students to move equipment in and out of each space.
Each laboratory was designed to be as open as possible, embracing the theme of “engineering on display”, a marked change from the dark and enclosed rooms these laboratories replaced.
