Imperial College, White City Campus, Translation & Innovation Hub

overview

The Translation & Innovation Hub (I-HUB) marks the second phase of Imperial West, a new campus for Imperial College located in the White City district of West London on a 22-acre site in the heart of a new research quarter. Organized into two wings, one seven storeys tall and the other 12 storeys, the building serves as a buffer between the campus and a major motorway.

We provided full façade consulting services to PLP Architecture, including the production of detailed façade drawings and façade performance specifications. The scope of the project comprises incubator laboratories, accelerator space and offices for commercial tenants located on the upper floors. There is also a ground-floor cafe as well as support facilities.

highlights

• The façade design features a fully unitised system, which incorporates glazing, metal sun shading and terracotta. The 16 façade-type variations furthermore include structural glazing, atria skylights and rainscreen cladding.
• The main challenges of the façade design included maintaining thermal performance of the unitised panels as the width reduces to half-size and then to quarter-size, as well as ensuring stability and alignment of cantilevering metal sunshades across multiple unitised panels and designing and detailing the asymmetric steel atria roof spanning between independent building structures.