12 Projects of Christmas: EHSI – DIT Grangegorman

Over the past 240 years Grangegorman, the new home of the colleges of Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), has been the site of a poor house, an asylum, a ‘fever hospital’, a prison, and as recently as the1960’s, St. Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital.

The transformation of Grangegorman into Ireland’s first 21^st century college campus incorporates the re-purposing of listed buildings for academic use, landscaping of the extensive site and the delivery of stunning new architecture.

Design and construction of a new science research and incubator facility over six storeys with enclosed plantroom at roof level and a total floor area of approximately 4,414m2. The building consists of Seminar Rooms, Laboratories, Offices and Welfare facilities.  Some of the facility will be leased to outside companies to use the facilities for testing etc.

BAM modelled the entire building in Revit and generated all of the required deliverables from the BIM model.

BAM fully coordinated mechanical and electrical services with architectural and structural fabric, with a particular view to creating a visually ordered laboratory layout where services were exposed.

During the design phase BAM produced photorealistic renderings from the BIM model to fully demonstrate the successful result of this co-ordination.  Architectural layout, structure and M&E services were fully co-ordinated to produce a controlled and ordered environment where quality of finishes, materials and furniture construction is the lasting visual impression.

The laboratory furniture of the proposed supplier was modelled in full detail to facilitate photorealistic visualisation of the spaces during the design phase. The Building is split into two components.

 The Environmental Health Sciences Institute (EHSI) of 2400m2 spread across several floors with accommodation and laboratories and offices for 90 full-time research students and 40 researcher and admin users.  136 office workstations with space for 100 people working in disciplines of biological, chemical and physical sciences.

 The roof top will be used to accommodate plant for scientific research.   Dedicated seminar rooms, meeting rooms, reception / exhibition spaces as well as informal meeting and discussion spaces.  Support and welfare facilities for staff and students are also provided within this facility.

 The second component of the Building will be the ‘Hot House’ Incubator (HHI) of 2000m2 in floor space.  This area will feature a mix of ‘rentable’ incubation units of varying sizes for outside companies to use.  A key feature of the design is the flexibility to allow the end user DIT to adapt to evolving needs of Clients.  Management office spaces and Hot Desks are designed to be open plan.  DIT expects to have 184 business people accommodated at any one time within the EHSI facility.

 A mix of meeting spaces will be available ranging from ‘Phone Booth’ rooms, 6-8 person meeting Rooms to boardroom facilities.

The Environmental Health Science Institute  was finished two months ahead of schedule, on budget and with no variations.