Header House & Glasshouses
AgResearch - Palmerston North
New Zealand Commercial Project Awards 2020 - Gold Award & Industrial Category Winner
The opportunity to invest in world class facilities to support the research being undertaken at the AgResearch Grasslands Campus resulted in the construction of the new PC2 Header House and Glasshouses. The new facility which was completed in 2019 comprises a single Header House connected to two separate glasshouses each comprising three rooms to enable different projects requiring varying conditions to be run concurrently.
The header house comprises a large open potting area, Clean Laboratory, Equipment Store and Extraction Room along with six Control Temperature Rooms incorporating grow lights, waste store and decontamination area to allow for the future installation of an autoclave. Windows within the open working area face towards the glasshouse to provide views into the glasshouse for observation without the need to enter.
Some of the complexities with this project included the need for pollen to be contained within the glasshouses and allowing for appropriate seismic separation between the header house and glasshouse without affecting the integrity of the glasshouse structure and undertaking the staged construction project within a fully-operational site. The outcome has been a ‘state of the art’ building which successfully incorporates architectural, mechanical and structural requirements alongside client research requirements.
Lab-works Architecture worked in collaboration with L2D Architects, Melbourne and NDY, Brisbane for the masterplanning of the project and specialist Glasshouse advice and expertise.
