Phase One: Edinburgh

Is there a new building in your city you’re gagging to have a look around? For many construction professionals working in Edinburgh, the Informatics Forum holds that sort of fascination. Architect Bennetts Associates has included all sorts of novel design features to make a bright modernist statement within the traditional Edinburgh university campus, and it has also managed to obtain a BREEAM “excellent” rating.

But as it’s one of the world’s top five research centres in a particularly complex branch of IT, it’s usually only open to computer geeks. Fortunately for newcomers to Edinburgh’s construction industry, Building’s Phase One event gave them the chance to have a look around.

So on a Thursday evening two weeks ago, they assembled at the Forum to debate the building’s merits, swap business cards with contacts from across the industry, grill our speakers and enjoy a drink or two.

John Miller, Bennetts’ project director, led a rapturous crowd on tours of the building and spoke about its unique design features – such as the atrium where the world’s top IT brains can fly their robots.

Attendees also got to hear from the head of one of the largest regeneration projects in Scotland, Colin Hunter. As chief executive of Waterfront Edinburgh, he’s got the task of regenerating 120 acres of Granton over the next 30 years, and he was refreshingly candid about the challenges. “The Granton market has completely stalled now,” he said. “The more traditional method of funding is going to be in difficulty for a number of years, and we’ll have to look at new models.”

The different communal spaces are really interesting. I wouldn’t mind having them in our offices, but you just don’t get that in commercial property

Kate Tilley, WSP

Sustainability would be planned in from the start, Hunter promised, revealing a very handy method for judging sustainable communities. “I use the two-pint rule. Can you walk for a pint of milk and a pint of beer within five minutes? There's lots of places you can’t do that and they have no sense of community.”

Miller tells his tale

The Informatics Forum building at Edinburgh university had been officially open for just one day when Building invited the industry’s new professionals for their exclusive tour. Bennetts’ John Miller (above) kindly devoted his evening to showing Phase One attendees round the £42m building and answering their many questions.

The informatics department’s 550 staff had already moved into the building and begun their work investigating information systems and, intriguingly, building robots. Miller pointed out a double-height sliding door opening out onto the central atrium. “That’s the robotics laboratory, where they build robots that fly or swim. When they’re building the flying ones, they can test them in here.”

The Informatics Forum project was about 30 years in the making. Originally the location of a dental hospital, the Forum’s site operated as a car park for 30 years while the university battled with the city’s planners to be allowed to build there.

I really like the use of materials in the interior. It’s so well detailed. It’s not very remarkable from the outside, but I think that’s the intention

Justin Brown, Ryder Architecture

In 2002, a fire in the city’s Cowgate district destroyed a number of university buildings, and the informatics department was left without a home. The planners relented, and Bennetts won the competition to design the facility in 2005. Balfour Beatty built the present building, the first phase of the planned development, and it became one of the first buildings in Scotland to be built to achieve a BREEAM “excellent” rating throughout the construction process.

The building may be used by scientists, but Bennetts Associates did not want to build a laboratory. The intention was to design a place where artists and scientists could work together – Miller describes it as an “interactive, buzzing space”. This has been achieved by the many and varied meeting spaces hidden within the building, some decked out with colourful bean bags and chairs, others with artworks bequeathed to the Forum by Scottish sculptor Eduardo Paolotti.

There was even talk of including white boards in the lifts so the researchers could scribble down equations whenever inspiration struck.

The building’s different levels are linked by what Miller describes as “wormholes”, or more prosaically, prefabricated white spiral staircases that infiltrate the central atrium and surrounding passageways. He chose a mix of materials for the building’s interior, with concrete pillars, steel stairwells and timber panels. The timber lifts are encased in glass columns, exposing their mechanical elements. One Phase One architect commented that it was “gentle high-tech”, a friendly yet industrial addition to the building’s interior.

The Phase One tourists were most impressed by the building’s terrace, which affords views across the Edinburgh rooftops to Arthur’s Seat, the craggy hilltop that overlooks the Scottish capital. The impressive detailing extends to the outdoor area, with silvery columns of pre-cast crushed stone supporting a sheltered area.

It’s a good solution for the site – I don’t think you will get the full effect of the building from the outside until the last phase is built

Eleftheria Maravelaki, Allan Murray Architects

Miller praised the efforts of contractor Balfour Beatty in creating a sustainable building, and particularly in achieving the BREEAM rating. “Major contractors understand these things,” he said.

“Clients think it’s going to cost more, but contractors have brought it in and are very successful at it. BREEAM needs to move on. It needs to be more grown up and this is a part of it.”

Bennetts may have finished the building but they’re not going home just yet.

Miller revealed plans for a rather in-depth post-occupancy evaluation. “We’re really interested in finding out how the building works, but we’re going to take it a bit further. Because we designed spaces to try and promote informal interaction, we are using an architectural psychologist over the next year to try to find out whether that’s working. I think these feedback loops are something missing from a lot of our industry – you finish building and that’s it.”

Outside eye

The Informatics Forum is an unusual treat for Edinburgh. On the exterior facade, the stonework’s the same as many buildings in the city, but when you come inside it’s a completely different kettle of fish. This should be used as an example of what BREEAM “excellent” can be like. It was really interesting that John Miller was talking about getting an architectural psychologist to study how the building’s used. The results should be fantastic. Not a lot of people bother to see how a building’s working afterwards, but if all that information could be available to other practices and contractors afterwards they might be able to learn from it.