The new Institute of Immunity and Transplantation: Pears building located on the Royal Free Hospital’s campus in North London is a state-of-the-art centre for research excellence.

Designed by Hopkins Architects, the centre houses world-class laboratory space, unique research facilities & write-up spaces for the UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, patient accommodation and office space for the Royal Free Charity. The new facilities will improve the provision of care for patients and help to deliver an effective public outreach and engagement programme. 

As structural and civil engineers, we enjoy engineering that challenges, engages, inspires and develops us. With the Pears building, our initial challenge was installing a new 12m deep basement within a complex, sloping site next to the working hospital and a listed building. Our starting point on every project is to undertake thorough on-site testing and forensic archive research to uncover the potential of a site and identify risks and opportunities. Working closely with geotechnical specialists A-Squared and ground water experts OGI, we undertook extensive ground and water modelling. This enabled us to design a detailed ground water drainage system which maintains the current hydrogeology of the surrounding area, allowing water that may have become dammed by the new basement to be collected and diverted around the excavation. Through our detailed design and A-Squared’s detail ground movement analysis, we were able to demonstrate minimal impact to the surrounding Listed buildings by ensuring a maximum damage category of 0 on the Burland Scale. Working closely with contractor Willmott Dixon, we were also able to integrate our SuDS strategies into the construction sequence to both accelerate the project programme and reduce costs.

© Hopkins Architects and Hayes Davidson