Fraser Brown MacKenna’s retrofit of the Cockcroft Building at the University of Brighton has been shortlisted in the RICS South East Design Innovation Awards.
In repurposing the Cockcroft Building at the University of Brighton, one of the largest retrofits of an occupied academic building in the UK, Fraser Brown MacKenna Architects were tasked with transforming a building designed in the atomic age into a research environment fit for the information age.
Named after the scientist who split the atom and designed with a machine-like rationalism, the ten storey building dominates the skyline and remains the centrepiece of the University’s Moulsecoomb campus, providing 15,000sqm of teaching and research labs, study spaces and academic offices.
The building was reaching the end of its useful life; this first opportunity for a wholesale refurbishment provided the chance to replace its outdated infrastructure and address issues of overheating, solar glare, high energy costs and complex way-finding as well as improve the building’s fabric, which had battled against the corrosive maritime climate for half a century.