Press Releases
One North Quay
Featured Project
Europe’s largest and most technologically advanced commercial health and life sciences building, this vertical campus supports cross-discipline collaboration, sets ambitious sustainability targets and will become an iconic presence at the heart of North Quay.
Catalyzing Collaboration
Heralding a groundbreaking shift in life sciences design, One North Quay departs from the conventional low-rise model, envisioning a vertical lab campus. With a keen focus on communal spaces and adaptability, the building is structured as a series of stacked neighborhoods, each comparable in size to a typical low-rise lab building.
Crafting Vertical Neighborhoods
The tower is envisioned as a series of stacked neighborhoods, made up of sub-communities with laboratories stitched together by rich amenities, shared spaces, and incubators.
Lounges
Shared spaces for collaborative or individual work create communities that can spark innovation through interaction.
Cafés
Cafés function as a place to take a break and recharge, but also as a space for meeting colleagues and building community.
The Lobby
The lobby pulls in all the light and greenery of the surrounding public realm while providing a hospitable place for people to meet.
The Groundplane
At its base, the tower interfaces with the surrounding public realm, adding vibrancy to the public realm and relating to the nearby water and greenspace.
Crafting the Laboratory of the Future
To more efficiently meet the heightened air-circulation demands of laboratories, One North Quay implements a distributed system with all-electric plant facilities strategically positioned on high-bay floors within each neighborhood. This design reduces the volume of air that requires handling and minimizes its travel distance, enhancing energy efficiency.
The distributed mechanical systems enhance resilience and flexibility, allowing each neighborhood to adjust its operations independently or even temporarily shut down in response to tenant requirements.
Complementing these efforts, KPF’s holistic, low-carbon design ethos extends to the building’s façade, which employs innovative, inverted mullions that minimize aluminum usage while optimizing solar shading, yielding an 11% embodied carbon reduction.
Additionally, a roof-mounted photovoltaic array contributes to onsite energy generation, further reducing the building’s climate impact.
One North Quay is committed to achieving top-tier certifications, targeting BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Platinum standards. It is poised to deliver a 38% reduction in operational carbon emissions and a 50% reduction in embodied carbon compared to baseline structures, marking a significant milestone in sustainable development within its category. Distinguished by its brightly glazed terra cotta panels, the tower’s striking exterior establishes it as a new architectural landmark in the Canary Wharf cluster, redefining the cityscape.
Managing Complexity
One North Quay will be the tallest lab building in Europe when it opens. As such, it combines the scale and structural complexity of high-rise construction with the heavy mechanical requirements of a laboratory building. On projects of this kind, using a three-dimensional BIM model as a single source of truth is essential to keeping everyone on the same page and the project on track.
This building’s mechanical systems are distributed across its 22 stories on three specialized floors, and coordinating effectively requires all consultants to be working together in a single BIM model. The KPF-hosted BIM model serves as a shared reference and creates transparency across consultant groups without having to move Revit files back and forth, saving time and limiting errors.
Project Details
One North Quay utilizes innovative design techniques and high-reaching sustainability measures to develop a next generation life sciences building—and the tallest lab in Europe.
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