Alan Turing Building

Last updated

Alan Turing Building
Alan Turing Building 2.jpg
Former namesAMPPS
General information
Type Educational
Location Manchester, United Kingdom
Coordinates 53°28′4.8″N2°13′53.1″W / 53.468000°N 2.231417°W / 53.468000; -2.231417
Completed2007 [1]
Owner University of Manchester
Technical details
Floor count5
Floor area17,000 m2 [1]
Design and construction
Architect(s) Sheppard Robson [1]
Services engineer Emcor Engineering [2]
Main contractorHBG Construction [3]
Awards and prizes2007 NW Regional Construction Award for Sustainability – Winner, Considerate Constructor – Gold Award. Building & Engineer Awards 2007 – Public Project of the Year – Finalist, Building & Engineer Awards 2007 – Energy Efficient Project of the Year – Finalist, RICS North West Awards 2008 – Sustainability – Finalist [4] Chartered Institute of Building "Construction Manager of the Year" – Silver.

The Alan Turing Building, named after the mathematician and founder of computer science Alan Turing, is a building at the University of Manchester, in Manchester, England. It houses the School of Mathematics, the Photon Science Institute and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA) (part of the School of Physics and Astronomy). The building is located in the Chorlton-on-Medlock district of Manchester, on Upper Brook Street, and is adjacent to University Place and the Henry Royce Institute.

Contents

While under construction, the project was known as AMPPS : Astronomy, Mathematics, Physics and Photon Science. The building was shortlisted for the Greater Manchester Building of the Year 2008 prize, which is awarded by the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce. [5] The manager of the building project was awarded a silver medal in the Chartered Institute of Building "Construction Manager of the Year" awards. [6]

Architecture

The £43m building was completed in July 2007, and was designed by architects Sheppard Robson. [1] It consists of three "fingers", each of which are four storeys high. The building is of steel frame construction, with reinforced concrete stairwells, [7] and grey zinc exterior cladding. [1]

The northern two fingers are joined by an atrium, which is spanned by a series of bridges. The southernmost finger was designed to hold low vibration laboratories, and is joined by a glazed bridge at third-floor level to the middle finger. [1]

An 'over-sailing' roof structure connects the three fingers acting as a suspension system for a photovoltaic array/solar shading using thin film technology. This photovoltaic array is designed to produce nearly 41 megawatt hours per annum, a saving of 17,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide each year. [1] [8] At the time of completion this was the largest photovoltaic array in North West England, and helped the architects to win an award for "Business Commitment to the Environment". [9]

One condition for planning approval was that the project included corridors for pedestrian access and visual transparency between Upper Brook Street and Oxford Road. This was to counter complaints by the residents of Brunswick, on the other side of Upper Brook Street, that previous university developments seemed to be creating a wall to them. The pedestrian walkway between the second and third finger, and the transparent atrium met these demands. [10] This follows the line of an earlier street, when the site was a residential area, and runs from Upper Brook Street to Oxford Road and is called "Wilton Street", as it was historically. [11]

The atrium looking down from the third floor Alan Turing Building 9.jpg
The atrium looking down from the third floor

In the 1960s, many mathematics departments were housed in high-rise buildings including the Mathematics Tower at the Victoria University of Manchester, and the Maths and Social Sciences Building at UMIST. These proved completely unsuited to the activities of a mathematics department (and arguably any academic department) as travel between floors in lifts (and uninviting stairways) discourages interaction between mathematicians resulting from chance encounter. Buildings such as the Mathematics Institute at Warwick (at East Site and later the Zeeman Building) and the Isaac Newton Institute at Cambridge are deliberately low-rise and designed to encourage chance encounters.[ citation needed ] The Alan Turing Building was designed with substantial input from the mathematicians,[ citation needed ] and the design reflects this including a large open-plan common room on the atrium bridge, open corridors and walkways [12] and the relocation of the best traditional blackboards from the old buildings.

Occupancy and facilities

The Atrium, during the move of the School of Mathematics Alan Turing building atrium July 2007.jpg
The Atrium, during the move of the School of Mathematics

The Photon Science Institute occupies the southernmost finger, with the northern two fingers housing Mathematics on the first three floors and the JBCA on the third and fourth floors. The ground floor atrium constitutes a public space including a small café called Code. [13]

Surrounding the atrium on the ground floor are the undergraduate common room for mathematics, as well as lecture rooms and undergraduate computer rooms. The first and second floor of the first two fingers mainly house the offices of academic staff and postgraduate students in mathematics, as well as the Manchester Institute for Mathematical Science (MIMS) conference areas. [14] One of seminar rooms is named after the topologist Frank Adams, and the library after algebraist Brian Hartley. Lecture theatres are named after Mordell, Richardson, Max Newman and Lighthill. A meeting room is named after Horace Lamb and the Access Grid room after Sydney Goldstein. The bridge across the atrium is the common room for mathematics academics and graduate students, where morning coffee is served.

The third floor houses the academic offices of the JBCA, which provides a new base for the research activities in astronomy and astrophysics with the relocation of many staff and students from Jodrell Bank Observatory. The Observatory now forms part of the JBCA and provides leading observational facilities such as the Lovell Telescope and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN). This floor differs in design from the others in that the rooms have windows onto the atrium and glass walls to central corridors in each wing, whilst retaining glass walled walkways across the atrium. The astrophysics seminar room is named after Sir Bernard Lovell, founder of Jodrell Bank Observatory. The fourth floor contains a number of labs, an RFI screened room and clean room, all for astrophysics instrumentation construction, such as receivers for the Lovell Telescope and the Planck spacecraft.[ citation needed ] In January 2008, the Project Design Office for the Square Kilometre Array relocated to Manchester to be hosted by the JBCA, co-ordinating the global efforts in constructing the next generation radio telescope.

The Photon Science Institute houses laboratories shielded from electromagnetic radiation and resistant to vibration, and features instruments such as a broadband sum frequency spectrometer, and a spectroscopic photon echo measurement kit. [15] A bridge on the third floor connects from Astrophysics to the Photon Science Institute, but retaining that finger's resistance to mechanical vibration.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Manchester</span> Public university in Manchester, England

The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodrell Bank Observatory</span> Astronomical observatory in Cheshire, England

Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of space probes at the start of the Space Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Lovell</span> English physicist and radio astronomer (1913–2012)

Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MERLIN</span> Observatory

The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an interferometer array of radio telescopes spread across England. The array is run from Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire by the University of Manchester on behalf of UK Research and Innovation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Square Kilometre Array</span> Radio telescope under construction in Australia and South Africa

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), and headquarters, are located at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom. The SKA cores are being built in the southern hemisphere, where the view of the Milky Way galaxy is the best and radio interference at its least.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lovell Telescope</span> Radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, England

The Lovell Telescope is a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey, Cheshire, in the north-west of England. When construction was finished in 1957, the telescope was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world at 76.2 m (250 ft) in diameter; it is now the third-largest, after the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia, United States, and the Effelsberg telescope in Germany. It was originally known as the "250 ft telescope" or the Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, before becoming the Mark I telescope around 1961 when future telescopes were being discussed. It was renamed to the Lovell Telescope in 1987 after Sir Bernard Lovell, and became a Grade I listed building in 1988. The telescope forms part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network arrays of radio telescopes.

Sir Henry Charles Husband, often known as H. C. Husband, was a leading British civil and consulting engineer from Sheffield, England, who designed bridges and other major civil engineering works. He is particularly known for his work on the Jodrell Bank radio telescopes; the first of these was the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world on its completion in 1957. Other projects he was involved in designing include the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station's aerials, one of the earliest telecobalt radiotherapy units, Sri Lanka's tallest building, and the rebuilding of Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge after a fire. He won the Royal Society's Royal Medal and the Wilhelm Exner Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark II (radio telescope)</span>

The Mark II is a radio telescope located at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey, Cheshire, in the north-west of England. It was built on the site of the 218 ft (66.4 m) Transit Telescope. Construction was completed in 1964. The telescope's design was used as the basis of the 85 ft (26 m) Goonhilly 1 dish, and the Mark III telescope is also based on a similar design.

This is a timeline of Jodrell Bank Observatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester</span>

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester is one of the largest and most active physics departments in the UK, taking around 250 new undergraduates and 50 postgraduates each year, and employing more than 80 members of academic staff and over 100 research fellows and associates. The department is based on two sites: the Schuster Laboratory on Brunswick Street and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Cheshire, international headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maths and Social Sciences Building</span> University building at the University of Manchester

The Maths and Social Sciences Building is a high-rise tower in Manchester, England. It was part of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) until that university merged with the Victoria University of Manchester, to form the University of Manchester, in 2004. It was vacated by the university in 2010 but is currently in use by the School of Materials while waiting for a new building to be constructed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics</span> Astrophysics centre at the University of Manchester, England

The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, is among the largest astrophysics groups in the UK. It includes the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, and the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre. The centre was formed after the merger of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST which brought two astronomy groups together. The Jodrell Bank site also hosts the headquarters of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) - the International Governmental Organisation (IGO) tasked with the delivery and operation of the Square Kilometre Array, created on the signing of the Rome Convention in 2019. The SKA will be the largest telescope in the world - construction is expected to start at the end of this decade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schuster Laboratory</span> Academic teaching and research in Manchester

The Schuster Laboratory houses the Department of Physics and Astronomy, part of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, at the University of Manchester. It is named after Arthur Schuster and is located in Brunswick Park on the main campus of the university.

The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) is one of the three faculties that comprise the University of Manchester in northern England. Established in October 2004, the faculty was originally called the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. It was renamed in 2016, following the abolition of the Faculty of Life Science and the incorporation of some aspects of life sciences into the departments of Chemistry and Earth and Environmental Sciences. It is organised into 2 schools and 9 departments: Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science; Chemistry; Computer Science; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Physics and Astronomy; Electrical & Electronic Engineering; Materials; Mathematics; and Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Morison</span>

Ian Morison FRAS is an astronomer and astrophysicist who served as the 35th Gresham Professor of Astronomy.

<i>The Jodcast</i> Astronomy podcast

The Jodcast is a bimonthly podcast created by astronomers at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA), University of Manchester in Manchester, England. It debuted in January 2006, aiming to inspire and inform the public about astronomy and related sciences, to excite young people with the latest astronomy research results, to motivate students to pursue careers in science, and to dispel stereotypes of scientists as incomprehensible and unapproachable.

Richard John Davis, OBE, FRAS was a radio astronomer for the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BINGO (telescope)</span> Radio telescope under construction in Paraiba, Brazil

BINGO is a 40 m (130 ft) transit radio telescope currently under construction that will observe redshifted hydrogen line emission by intensity mapping to measure dark energy through baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the radio frequency band.

Richard Battye is a cosmologist, theoretical physicist and former first-class cricketer. He is currently a Professor of Cosmology at the University of Manchester and has been the associate director (science) in the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics since 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Scaife</span> Radio astronomer

Anna Margaret Mahala Scaife is a Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester and Head of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics Interferometry Centre of Excellence. She is the co-director of Policy@Manchester. She was awarded the 2019 Royal Astronomical Society Jackson-Gwilt Medal in recognition of her contributions to astrophysical instrumentation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Piccadilly Manchester — Sheppard Robinson". Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 25 November 2007.
  2. EMCOR Group PLC 2005 Review, p9 Archived 20 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine accessed 30 December 2007
  3. Kingframe Architectural Facade Systems Project Profile: University of Manchester AMPPS, Off site, August 2006,[ permanent dead link ]
  4. "Labs 21 Alan Turing Building 2 March 2009" (PDF). Retrieved 1 May 2009.[ permanent dead link ]
  5. Binns, Simon (1 August 2008). "Four buildings shortlisted for Building of the Year". Crain's Manchester Business. Archived from the original on 21 January 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2008.
  6. "Construction Manager of the Year 2008" . Retrieved 23 December 2008.[ dead link ]
  7. Nick Higham. "Construction of the Alan Turing Building, University of Manchester".. Photographs clearly show construction details including concrete stairway towers and steel frames.
  8. "Constructing Excellence, Demonstration Project".
  9. "Sheppard Robson wins top award". Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 25 November 2007.
  10. "Manchester City Council Planning and Highways Committee Thursday 21st December 2006, University of Manchester" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 January 2008.
  11. Peter J. Eccles. "Undergraduate Facilities in the Alan Turing Building" (PDF). University of Manchester School of Mathematics. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 25 November 2007.
  12. "Schott solar, quoting Sheppard Robson press release on design of building". Archived from the original on 2 January 2008. Retrieved 29 December 2007.
  13. "Manchester "Food on campus" website" . Retrieved 6 March 2024.
  14. "Manchester Institute for Mathematical Sciences: The Alan Turing Building" . Retrieved 25 November 2007.
  15. Energy Efficiency Team (2007). "Improving efficiency by design" (PDF). Energy Efficiency Now (4): 6–8. Retrieved 29 December 2007.[ permanent dead link ]