Laboratory Furniture

The Cambridge University Botanic Garden was the brainchild of John Stevens Henslow, Professor of Botany at the University from 1825 until his death in 1861 and the loved and revered mentor of Charles Darwin. Henslow’s research focused on the nature and origin of species, and his influence and inspiration is much credited in Darwin’s revolutionary work. Founded in 1846, the Garden was home to 8,000 plant species, including an array of trees which form one of the UK’s finest arboretums. Designing the furniture for this prestigious laboratory was an honour.

At the turn of the millennium, set against a background of a burgeoning world population and the consequent urgent need for agricultural innovation, it was decided that Cambridge University needed a world-class post-doctorate facility for its Botanic Institute. The laboratory should attract the very best scientists, and would cement the University’s reputation for the most advanced research in this field.

Baron Sainsbury of Turville, in Iine for election as the next Chancellor of the University after Prince Philip’s retirement, was keen to fund the project through his Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Architects Stanton Williams were appointed to design what had to be a signature building in every respect. ‘One of the ways that Stanton Williams really distinguished themselves,’ says Roger Freedman, the Foundation’s Chief Scientific Advisor to the Sainsbury Laboratory, ‘was that they dedicated quite a long time to understanding what their remit was, what the building had to be. And they also took time to look at the site. And when they had digested those issues, that was when they started sketching out general ideas. They really listened.’

One of Stanton Williams’ characteristic attitudes to design is to guarantee aesthetic coherence throughout the project by controlling every element of the project down to the last detail. This includes their consideration for furniture and, in this case laboratory furniture, in the earliest stages of concept and schematic design.

Lord Sainsbury recommended Luke Hughes as the furniture design consultants for the project. We had recently designed and made his dining table and furniture for the Institute of Government and his private office HQ and we were the only practice he knew with a similar approach to Stanton Williams’ when it came to detail.

A schedule of all the furniture types the building needed – soft public seating, custom occasional tables, workstations, research pods, credenzas, laboratory furniture, carrels, custom meeting and 30-seat conference tables– was drawn up and priced at low and high points to meet the ‘very tight’ budget. As furniture designers, Luke Hughes’ job was to find a clever way of value engineering and procuring the furniture to stay on budget, but not diminish the quality of the architecture in any way.

Budget is always an early Luke Hughes design criterion, one of the things on which the company focuses its expertise in value engineering. It is wasteful of time, resources, personnel and money to engage in the design process and only then discover that the budget won’t support it.

Stanton Williams founding partner, Alan Stanton, worked closely with the Luke Hughes team throughout the project, considering every detail and contributing to the design language that we then flowed seamlessly across the entire range we developed for the project, including the laboratory furniture.

The design development process involved many meetings and models, and repeated visits to the building to understand it better. Furniture designers and architect also examined the stainless steel welding in the selected specialist custom fabrication workshops, and visited the upholsterers to test the ‘give’ in the dual foam layers, to decide on cricket ball seams or pleated ones, to control the stretching and stitching to ensure the leather would not crease or ruck up.

Welding the stainless steel presented a number of challenges because stainless steel is much more ductile than mild steel, and hence much more prone to distortion from heat. Where the welds went and what happened in the process drove the Luke Hughes design and engineering team in their decisions to fold or join and a host of other details. At times, the Luke Hughes team were drawing as the workshops were making, pushing the tolerances to see how tight they could make the shadow gaps.

The custom 10-seat stainless steel framed tables in the dining commons are 2440mm / 8ft long. Clever engineering design meant no triangulation was required. Desking and laboratory furniture, both in individual rooms and multi-occupancy open-plan areas, echo the calm rationality of the linear design, with slate grey worktops over proprietary pedestal units in the office floor areas, and solo desking for the individual spaces carrying cable management pods under their work surfaces.