Education Meeting Architectural Excellence
Client
University of Canterbury (UC)
Location
Ōtautahi (Christchurch), Aotearoa/New Zealand
Sector
Services
Year Completed
2018
Floor Area
20,000m²
Project Value
NZ $164M
Architect
Construction Company
RRSIC Stage 1 project was the larger and more technically challenging of the two stages of the Rutherford Regional Science and Innovation Centre. With a total project budget of $216 million for Stages 1 and 2, the new centre will provide accommodation for the College of Science, along with an unprecedented resource for the Canterbury region.
Minimisation of fire separation to reduce fire rating to services and penetrations was critical to the client and architectural vision for an open and connected teaching environment. This also contributed to ease of construction, reduced construction cost and minimising future maintenance requirements for the building.
During the period between design approval and completion of the building the fire design withstood several changes to the building design with minimal implications. This demonstrated the risk consideration/robustness approach to the final functionality and buildability applied to the final fire design, while still minimising ‘over design’. The fire design gave the other consultants and client and confidence to design and not mandate or constrict their solutions.
The design stages were delivered on time and on budget, with active involvement through the extended construction period required by Fletchers.
Holmes also provided structural fire analysis using finite element methods to demonstrate the capacity of specific structural members.
“As always, it is what people do in buildings that is important to the University, and what’s important about this building is that it will enable us to do our research and teaching in different ways, and enable our students to be a different kind of graduate...This is the future of science and we are excited to be at its leading edge.”