Public buildings
From education and learning to arts and culture, public buildings all have their own performance demands. With such an important role to play in society, they must overcome significant design challenges to provide the right function for every member of the community.
Public buildings can serve as longstanding community hubs or focal points for urban renewal and regeneration, and design is crucial to their success.
Accessibility and inclusivity are core elements to these buildings, both internally and externally. This requirement sits alongside user experience, safety and security, health and well-being, but there is also an increasing need for energy efficiency and climate resilience.
Technical demands on public buildings range from efficiencies gained through standardization and repeatability, for example across school building programs, to the highly specialized requirements of museum displays and conservation.
That’s why cross-disciplinary thinking is required to realize synergies between building functions and the local environment.
What can we do for you?
Deliver social value
People are at the heart of every design — so we design with their needs and aspirations front of mind. Where appropriate, we bring expertise in stakeholder engagement and communication alongside our technical skills, to develop solutions that not only work for users but will exceed their expectations and delight them. Because when buildings add social value, they add value for you too, increasing foot traffic and creating vibrant social hubs.
Embed sustainability
Planning and designing for sustainability creates buildings that are adaptable to changing uses, social needs, technologies, and environmental conditions. It ensures that buildings are healthy — for people and the environment. It helps you align with decarbonization targets and improve climate resilience. And it anticipates maintenance, repair, and ultimate deconstruction, so that work can be carried out safely, affordably, and using resources responsibly.
Develop great design
We work with many of the world’s leading architects to create public buildings that improve society. Our multidisciplinary breadth and depth combined with our global footprint enable us to transfer innovation and best practice to new projects, helping you attain award-winning design quality, outstanding technical performance, and excellent value for money.
Sustainable public building design and engineering
Our performance engineering approach applies to new and existing buildings.
Our experience
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Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, QC, CanadaThe biggest public-private partnership (P3) hospital project in Canadian history, the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) consolidates three existing teaching, research, and healthcare facilities onto a single site. The project faced the challenge of a tight city center location. We were retained as the Independent Certifier for the construction phase, responsible for checking the compliance of the facility against the clients’ requirements.
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GenZero Schools, UKWe developed a standardized design for schools that embraces net zero while creating great places for students and teachers. GenZero builds on our track record in creating standardized designs for the Priority School Building Program, which delivered 90 primary schools using offsite solutions in just five years.
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Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New ZealandLen Lye was one of New Zealand’s most important artists, known internationally for his experimental films and kinetic sculptures. His hometown, New Plymouth, commissioned the country’s first dedicated single-artist gallery to raise its profile as a leading cultural city. Reflecting the intensity, energy, and excitement of Len Lye’s work, we designed a stainless steel facade that is aesthetically simple but technically ingenious and compatible with local fabrication capability.
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Royal College of Art Battersea campus, London, UKWe provided multidisciplinary engineering for a major new research and development campus in central London, which the Royal College of Art describes as its most significant project ever. The college is a keystone institution in the regeneration of the wider Battersea area, requiring a building that makes a strong architectural statement, is sympathetic to its area, provides outstanding teaching, learning, and studio spaces for students, and encourages public interest and engagement.
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Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, UKShakespeare North is a cultural venue attracting more than 100,000 visitors to the town each year, giving a £5.3 million annual boost to the local economy. We provided multidisciplinary engineering design on the project. At its heart is a 460-seat wooden performance space that is a faithful recreation of an Elizabethan design, in homage to the theater that once stood in Prescot 400 years ago. The building also features catering facilities, teaching spaces, a dance studio, and a landscaped performance garden.
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Sydney Fish Market, AustraliaWhen the New South Wales government asked us to help create a bold new building to rehouse top tourist destination Sydney Fish Market as the catalyst for a multimillion-dollar regeneration of the area, we responded with an innovative and sustainable approach. We helped our client define what the new building could be and supported the tendering process. We are the structural, civil, and marine engineer for the three-year tender design phase and now sit client side, assuring the design as technical advisor.
Intelligent Content
Intelligent Content provides a managed library of information-rich, parametric BIM objects that can be reused instead of recreated, and optimized with each successive use. A team of experts creates and quality-checks all objects, reducing model development time and enabling the rapid prototyping of designs.
STEPS
STEPS was the first solution to map people in motion, from transportation interfaces to stadium evacuation. STEPS realistically simulates pedestrian movements to test design layouts and operational plans. It enables users to understand how people will act in daily situations and in emergencies.
