Nexus

The project brief was to produce a concept for place where new ideas could be exposed, challenged, tested, simulated, applied, provoked, reviewed, rejected and supported. The design response is conceived as an organic structure, a matrix or scaffold within which the dual activities of education and research can evolve.

Capable of continuous modification, the structure supports current and future technological innovation. Using rapid-manufacturing techniques, the low-cost adaptable skin can be removed, replaced or altered as materials and/or building systems improve. The interior is akin to a production stage where moveable walls, flooring, lighting and rigging systems are changed to adapt to the next use…one week a revolutionary lecture theatre, the next week a virtual operating theatre, then a train prototype etc.