The Biosphere at Newcastle Helix

The Biosphere, a 7,200m² bio-science centre, is the first independent Newcastle City Council building at Newcastle Helix. The centre provides flexible laboratory and office accommodation for a range of bio-science, primary life science and healthcare companies, enabling them to carry out research and product development and support innovation and growth within the sector. The 24-acre Helix site has become an exemplar in sustainable urban development, attracting leading-edge science and technology organisations to a new community environment.

The building has been designed to be as flexible as possible and cater for the varying needs of ‘start-up’ pioneering businesses, facilitating their growth as their ventures flourish.

Gordon Reid, Partner, commented, "To develop a building that met the client’s brief and budget required a fully integrated design approach. To achieve this, the whole design team co-located to a shared design space for two weeks during Stage 2 and Stage 3. This allowed integrated solutions to be developed and tested quickly. Each discipline produced their concept design in a 3D Revit environment, which allowed a fully coordinated 3D design to be developed very early in the process."