An unusual, angular-shaped structure is rising from the landscape in the deepest West Country.
Located on the Exeter Science Park, this will be the home for the Met Office’s new “super computer”. Thirteen times more powerful than the system it replaces, and capable of performing 16,000 trillion calculations a second, the super computer will play a key role in developing more sophisticated weather and climate models, which will help the UK’s resilience to extreme weather events.
Willmott Dixon was appointed as main contractor for the £22m project last September, through the Scape framework, and the strange-looking building is starting to take shape.
Engineer Atkins, which developed the design with architect Stride Treglown, services engineer Arup and structural engineer WSP, describes the new structure as “a spark of science-fiction in the West Country”, saying its “angular, computer-circuitry design and turquoise neon-lights was inspired by the movie Tron”.
The 30,000 sq ft facility comprises two steel-framed structures. The IT hall, 90m long by 25m wide with sloping sides, will house the Met Office’s new £97m, 140-tonne supercomputer.
However, the more complicated building is the two-storey “collaboration” space. Designed to reflect the patterns on a circuit board, it has a hexagonal shape, with two glazed, sloping facades at either end.
The scheme is targeting a rating of BREEAM Excellent.
Willmott Dixon project manager Kristian Cartwright says: “We’ve used BIM Level 2 to deliver the project, which has allowed greater collaboration on the design and construction among the project team.”
The contractor has recently completed a space technology facility at Harwell Science Campus in Oxfordshire, and south west managing director Neal Stephens says: “This will be another important asset to the country’s technology sector, and further complements our skill-set for building science facilities.”
The supercomputer is set to be operational by 2017.
