Architectural Assistant Mirabell Schmidt takes a seat on the University of Westminster’s crit panel

COVID-19 has simply accelerated this journey, or accentuated the need to move forwards at speed.

Currently, accessing the samples is a manual process which exposes the users to risk of asphyxiation due to their close proximity to the liquid Nitrogen.As the Nitrogen evaporates, a blanket of cold Nitrogen forms on the floor and rises upwards, thereby excluding the oxygen necessary for human life.. For the new facility, they wanted to make sure no-one had to go near the storage vessels.

So they commissioned a US company called Brooks to design a robot that could collect samples and deliver them to the scientist, in a way that’s a bit like a vending machine.Our challenge was to design and build the building around the robot system which was a world first and still in development.. Additionally, the way Bryden Wood have designed the extraction systems is a UK - and probably world first.Because these rooms are highly hazardous, the air change rate must be high in volume, but it must also be at low level physically.

In every other facility I know of, extracting at low level is done with ductwork.It's inefficient because you can only put ductwork in certain areas, as people cannot be required to step over it as they move around the space.

Worse, because of the way ductwork is made, the extraction actually takes place about 15cm from the floor, which would allow the cold nitrogen to completely miss the extraction and bleed out into the room..

So we designed a trench system, covered with a grille, to surround all the critical areas, and we extract the air from the trench.These configurators rely on comprehensive data sets, organised in such a way as to be codified and machine-readable.

The master planning approach described in this article can be seen as the data-gathering and organising part of digital master planning – the preparatory work which could lead, in this case, to a digital configurator for pharmaceutical facilities..While the data we gather in master planning involves large amounts of human activity and processes, the outputs are all digital to some degree, and the entire process is digital in character, seeking to extract and organise data, so that at a later stage we can establish and apply rigorous rules.

This is where Design to Value intersects with digital.. For master planning, this is an approach that is proven to deliver substantial benefit to clients, against a wide range of value drivers.The collaborative element is essential.