FLOORS, WALLS & CEILINGS
NORWOOD’S MODULAR EXPERTISE PROVIDES A SOUND SOLUTION FOR THE RAY DOLBY CENTRE A key aim for both higher education providers and the corporate world is to create opportunities for academia and research to work collaboratively with businesses. There are advantages for both sides of the equation. For universities, it means opportunities for students and researchers to work on real-world projects and connect with potential future employers; while for companies, it offers a chance to shape future skills and benefit from knowledgeable specialists.
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he challenge to delivering this aim is in creating an infrastructure that supports such collaboration. For many universities, developing a physical space for research and study that also provides an environment for private sector engagement has become a priority. At Cambridge University, a £250m development – the Ray Dolby Centre – has become the benchmark for such collaboration between education and business. Designed in Revit by nbbj and delivered in BIM by Bouygues UK, with specialist modular partitioning designed, manufactured and installed by Norwood, the new centre for research and collaboration will form part of Cambridge University’s physics department. The development has been named after Ray Dolby, a PhD alumnus of Cambridge University, a former fellow of Pembroke College, an inventor and the founder of Dolby; the A/V company synonymous with sound recording. It has been co-funded by Dolby and seeks to continue his legacy of innovation by providing a world-leading facility for research projects that furthers
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learning and underpins commercial product development.
Safety and transparency A noticeable trend in the design and construction of research environments is the move to make research as visible as possible and connect projects with the outside world. This is a key principle of the Ray Dolby development, which has been designed to showcase the innovation that takes place within the building to visitors and inspire students from across the university. The facility is high tech, with cleanrooms and controlled environments where research activities and experiments can take place, but the atrium provides a viewing gallery with a 2.85m-high, fire-rated glazed wall providing both segregation and safety. The fire-rated glazed wall was part of Norwood’s £1.9m package on the Ray Dolby Centre project, which also included a 2500m 2 walk-on ceiling, and design, manufacture and installation of a cleanroom partitioning system totalling 4080m 2. To provide the safety protection
required for the R&D areas, the glazed wall called upon the cleanroom partition specialist’s design expertise and UK manufacturing capabilities. Alongside the goals of transparency and exemplary health and safety, the facility has also been designed to address any commercial sensitivities for the corporate projects under development in the labs and research areas. To this end, the glazing has been fitted with blackout blinds to enable any commercially-sensitive research projects to be protected.
Glazed partition The fire-rated glazed wall was designed by the Norwood team and is the largest fire-rated glazed partition the company has ever created. The specification requirement was for 60-minute fire integrity and insulation to protect the atrium from fire and heat from any incidents within the cleanroom or lab areas, and to protect the research facilities from any fire and heat due to an incident in the publicly-accessible areas.