COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
Francis Crick
Institute's £700m building 'too noisy to concentrate'
Some of the 1,250
people working at the year-old laboratory say its open plan layout, designed to
produce collaboration, makes it hard to focus on work
This is a striking building from outside.
But the design inside is not at all successful
aesthetically, and, from what I know of other contemporary buildings with
something of the kind, huge open spaces as the atrium area here, I wouldn't be
at all surprised if its noise levels were bad.
I've been in school buildings built in this fashion inside,
and they absolutely failed their purpose and condemned generations of students
to a poor learning environment.
Such a design inside also wastes a huge amount of
potentially usable floor space and actually makes it awkward to move from one
side of the building to the other.
I regard such efforts inside as violating a prime dictum of
good architecture. Le Corbusier said a house is a machine for living, and of
course it follows that such an institute is a machine for the activities of the
institute, not a place just to gaze at other levels.
An internal design which makes it unnecessarily difficult to
move around actually violates the purpose of this building stated to be a place
where scientists work together to make breakthroughs. Work together? In an
interior like this? I don't think so.
And, of course noise levels only further defeat the purpose.
A sadly failed building, I think, but one with an extremely
handsome presence on the street.
