The Borthwick Institute represents a unique integration of engineering disciplines and architecture. One of the foremost archives in the country, the building needed careful engineering to meet the exacting construction standards. To facilitate this, structural and services engineers were formed into an integrated team and advanced computational analysis was carried out on the internal environment of the offices, reading rooms and the archive.

Buro Happold's team of engineers worked in close consultation with the staff at the Institute to ensure that their views were built into the planning and design process right from the start. This meant that there was less need for revisions and interventions at a later stage.

The archive is framed in a concrete box structure, while the superstructure for offices and reading rooms is framed with composite steel beams. The design started with computational modelling of the thermal and humidity characteristics of the archive space, which is designed to meet strict humidity and thermal limits in the event of a power cut.

Date: 2000 - 2004