Serving LaMB: Life and Mind Building, Oxford

In the biggest building program ever undertaken by the University of Oxford, the city’s skyline is being pierced by a major new science centre.

Oxford today is a city of both rising cranes and dreaming spires, with work underway on new buildings and improvements to old universities. Walk through the university parks, for example, and you’ll notice a major new building taking shape near Linacre College. Tentatively named the Life and Mind Building (LaMB), the £200m facility is already being highlighted as the largest building project commissioned by the University of Oxford. LaMB is also the first structure to be allowed to breach (by just over two metres) a policy which states that no new building must exceed the 22.5 meter height of the Carfax Tower in the historic city centre.

The scheme consists of two wings: a four-storey steel-framed area for offices and test booths, plus an attached five-storey concrete block with specialist laboratory space, facilities for image, workshops and greenhouses at roof level. The conference facilities will occupy the basement and ground floor, with access from a new open public space. LaMB will host 800 students and 1,200 researchers from the Department of Experimental Psychology and a new Department of Biology that will combine the departments of Plant Sciences and Zoology.

The new 24,927 sq m facility occupies the former site of the Tinbergen Building, once Oxford’s largest teaching and research centre, which closed in February 2017 after asbestos was discovered during construction of reform

The project is part of a joint development venture between the university and Legal & General (L&G), into which the latter has injected £4 billion. LaMB, on which planning began in 2017, predates the partnership and was the first project L&G and the university undertook together, says Mark Tunstall, director of northern home counties operations for main contractor Wates .

“Eventually, when the grid decarbonises, the building will become carbon neutral in operation because it is not dependent on gas.”

Mark Tunstall, Wates

LaMB’s reinforced concrete frame was completed in mid-February and installation of the precast concrete facade was underway when Construction news visited the site. Excluding the facade, LaMB requires 38,400 tons of concrete. “Now we’re in that transition of finishing and completing the frame, making it airtight and moving into the building envelope,” Tunstall says. “For us, it’s very positive, because we’ve overcome many of the high-risk elements at ground level and around the basement of the building structure, and we’re still on schedule. We had a tough PCSA [pre-construction services agreement] where we challenged everything – we took the design down and made sure it was right.”

LaMB’s design had to align with the university’s Sustainability Design Guide, which emphasizes Passivhaus principles for new build projects, as the client seeks to halve its total carbon emissions. carbon in 2030. In fact, the new building is designed to be net zero carbon in operation by then. LaMB is designed with an EPC ‘A’ rating to deliver a 40% improvement to Building Regulations Part L standards for energy performance and carbon emissions of new and existing buildings.

The project team thermally modeled each interface to ensure that the building meets the intended energy use criteria. “We have taken advantage of the university’s district heating system, which have plans to decarbonise, rather than using new standard gas boilers,” explains Tunstall. “We have air source heat pumps that provide 80 percent heat recovery. But there is also CO₂ sensors and temperature sensors around the building, so the ventilation goes up and down to suit the needs of the building.”

The solar panels on the roof will provide 56.5 kilowatts of electricity per year. “Eventually, when the grid decarbonises, the building will become carbon neutral in operation because it is not dependent on gas,” he adds.

The use of sustainably sourced wood in the ceilings and interior finishes should also help reduce LaMB’s carbon footprint. In line with the university’s sustainability strategy, the aim is to use 90 per cent recycled or reclaimed wood on site. “The time is coming when customers will judge offers and designs not just on cost, but on what the carbon impact will be,” Tunstall says.

Roll out of place

The envelope and equipment work at LaMB requires 140,000 hours of mechanical and electrical (M&E) installation, including 38,500 hours of off-site fabrication in Coventry at the Prism facility, which is owned by Wates subsidiary SES.

Wates project manager Allan Brockwell stresses that modular manufacturing is essential to staying on budget and on schedule. “If we hadn’t been able to do off-site manufacturing … we probably would have been looking at extending the duration of the project or having to employ more workers on-site, which would not have been possible for this particular project.”

Tunstall says off-site fabrication of vertical elevations helps achieve “certainty of program” for a multi-service building such as LaMB. Wates is also modulating the horizontal distribution of services, either on the floor plates or on the deck, he notes. “This method simplifies site operations – it increases quality, efficiency and safety on site, and also helps with the skills shortage we currently have.”

Prism is producing 22 faucets, more than 600 distribution modules and several fully prefabricated pump rooms for on-site assembly. The facility was already producing prefabricated stairs with pre-installed handrails. “We tried to use precast concrete wherever we could in the walls and columns,” adds Tunstall.

The off-site construction extends to LaMB’s facade panels, which echo the traditional architecture of Oxford’s academic buildings. “We used unified, modular and prefabricated cladding as standardized elements, to achieve the most efficient and cost-effective result on the facade,” says Tunstall. “We manufactured the facade elements in advance and put them in a warehouse. This is reassuring, especially in the current climate with all the issues surrounding the availability and cost of material. It gives us a buffer.”

Demolition of the basement

LaMB’s basement occupies a large, deep footprint that required the removal of a low-ceilinged parking basement with 1960s concrete and heavy pile caps. “We had to tear it down in the middle of the highly sensitive science room,” says Tunstall.

The fastest and cheapest method of demolishing a basement is to use hydraulic breakers, but Wates’ team found this unsuitable for the local working environment. Other science buildings near the LaMB site use vibration-sensitive equipment to conduct experiments, so the project team installed noise and vibration control equipment.

“We went through each of the buildings and understood their sensibilities,” explains Tunstall. “We did a break test of concrete and pile caps, and then we looked at the impact it had on the different structures around it and asked, ‘Is this acceptable?'”

One solution was to minimize site drilling by using cast-in channels with self-anchor slots that provide the necessary fit when the restraints are set into the concrete. Brockwell adds that these channels offer an additional health and safety benefit by reducing the production of silica dust.

Interface problem

The project team also had to deal with a legacy interface challenge posed by the Chemistry Teaching Laboratory (CTL) built in the 1960s, which continues to operate as LaMB takes shape. The issue is complicated because the footprints of the two structures overlap.

Tunstall says, “We had to look at the oldest structure and [structural engineer] Ramboll validated that it could host the new building we put there. And then we linked the new structure out of the CTL.”

Lightweight cross-laminated timber slabs were used for the interface rather than heavier concrete. But there are different movement criteria between the new building, which sits on deep piles, and the CTL, which sits on a deep raft foundation, so innovative thinking was needed to meet the thermal requirements and necessary tightness. “This is something the team has worked hard on,” says Tunstall.

The next project milestone is the completion of the building envelope, tentatively scheduled for the end of September before general completion and handover to the client in late 2024.

“If you question everything at an early stage, if you really challenge everything at an early stage, projects can be successful if you’ve solved all the problems,” says Tunstall. “So when you get to the site, all you have to do is deliver well.”