Bond Bryan’s Vision Of
Factory 2050
Becomes Reality
Factory 2050, also dubbed the
reconfigurable factory, reached its
completion this month.
Archetech - Page 112
Around half a mile from the Advanced
Manufacturing Park, Factory 2050 is
the first project on the planned 50
acre University of Sheffield Advanced
Manufacturing Campus 2 at Sheffield
Business Park, and will be the UK’s
first fully reconfigurable assembly and
component manufacturing facility for
collaborative research, capable of rapidly
switching production between different
high-value components and one-off
parts.
Bond Bryan Architects have long become
industry experts in designing and
delivering Advanced Manufacturing
Research Centres nationally, so when the
firm won this project in summer 2013 the
brief and dream was to design a circular
factory; a concept first created for the
AMRC in 2005, but not achievable at
that time due to budget and programme
restraints.
Bond Bryan proved that re-configurability
and flexibility do not need to rely on
traditional building form and layout. This
project creatively demonstrates how form
is no longer an inhibitor to functionality
of an advanced manufacturing
environment.
Principal designer and Director at Bond
Bryan, Darren Southgate commented:
”This is a special moment for me
personally seeing a visionary building
developed in my mind’s eye over ten
years now become a reality. The idea of
linking the core visually, without walls
and being part of the ‘workspace donut’
were always leading design principles.
It is a human need to be associated or
close to activities that link thinking and
doing; the days of disappearing into
cellular offices away from the production
environment have been replaced by
hands on doing and reporting; them and
us is no longer. The need for quiet space
hasn’t gone but it is shared through
multifunctional collaborative spaces.”
With its fully glazed elevations and
circular plan the building features a core
of open plan working, meeting rooms,
lifts and stairs at its heart.Clever design
elements include single staircase access
from the core accommodation with
under-workshop floor tunnel egress,
removing the need for an awkward
second staircase and providing 100%
uninterrupted research floor space.
The mechanical and electrical installation
is centralised in the core with perimetertrenched services to get vital air, water,