Active Learning Laboratory

The colourful world of engineering

Liverpool is famed for its townscape, with well-known landmarks like the Liver Building, Radio City Tower, and the two cathedrals. In 2009, the remodelling of the University of Liverpool’s engineering department created a futuristic addition to the city’s skyline. The centrepiece is the Active Learning Laboratory, a seven-storey glass box, which appears to hover in the night sky like something from another world, glowing in an endlessly changing sequence of colours. The building, designed by Sheppard Robson and Partners with Arup Lighting, cleverly wraps a new skin of fritted glass panels around the existing columns of a 1960s brutalist tower. The façades are made up of two layers of glass sandwiched together with a dotted pattern imprinted on the outer layer. The translucent dots provide a surface onto which light is reflected from hundreds of LEDs housed inside, creating the glow.

The lighting can be programmed to display simple numbers, letters, and geometric shapes as well as an infinite array of rotating colours and morphing designs and patterns. It has been used to celebrate significant events such as festivals and saints’ days; for example, the façades were illuminated in blue to mark World Diabetes Day, raising awareness of the disease and the university’s important research into its treatment and cure. For the Liverpool Biennial, artist Paul Rooney created a strange artwork called He Was Afraid, consisting of a sequence of international maritime signal flags forming words recalling the unsettling power of the past. At a more functional level, the new, 21st-century structure not only makes an iconic visual statement, but also exploits cutting-edge LED technology and electronic solar tracking equipment to reduce energy consumption and running costs.

Address Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 3GJ, www.liv.ac.uk/engineering | Getting there

12-minute walk from Lime Street station or Central station | Tip On the opposite side of Brownlow Hill is the Liverpool School of Art and Design, another of the city’s best contemporary buildings, which frequently holds public events and exhibitions (www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/events).