The most modest building from the shortlist was chosen as the best building in Great Britain - not an Olympic arena, not a theater, not a famous bank or just another Maggie Center, as well as the most modest authors possible: the founders of Stanton Williams belong to the generation of David Chipperfield (who also his Museum Hepworth - Wakefield), but cannot boast even half of its fame.
However, as their Cambridge construction demonstrates, they are not inferior in talent to their peers. The flora research laboratory is located in the Botanical Gardens of the University of Cambridge, a monument of landscape architecture of the 19th century, therefore, the authors of the project were required to be very attentive to the context.
The building is faced with limestone, wood and glass are also widely used. The "porticos" of the facades are reminiscent of both the classical heritage and the closed courtyards of monasteries and colleges: like them, the laboratory building is grouped around a quadrangular courtyard. It retains its function as a place of meeting and solitude at the same time, although one side of it is left open: it is fenced off from the garden space by a line of trees planted in the century before last.
The building has one underground and two aboveground levels. On the ground floor there are public spaces: a lecture room, meeting rooms and a cafe open to all visitors of the garden. In the interests of security, the second floor is accessible only to employees: there are actually laboratories with their own meeting rooms and a university herbarium. These spaces in the future can be easily transformed in accordance with the changing needs of science.
