Located on a corner with tight street frontages opposite Liverpool Hospital, in a dense urban setting, the Ingham Health Research Institute (IHRI) abuts the existing Health Services Building (HSB) in Campbell Street. Designed by MSJ to create well lit spaces and enhance an awareness of the external environment within the restricted context, a glazed lift core and open staircase rise through the spatially connected lobbies. Strategically positioned next to common areas and meeting rooms to enhance research collaboration, each lobby space provides a highly functional, interactive environment for staff emerging from the administration floor, a biological research unit and laboratories, which include two ‘dry’ PC-2 floors and one ‘wet’ PC-3 floor.
The northern pitch of the roof orients photovoltaic panels to the sun while sun shading is tailored in design to address the north and east elevations. To minimise low summer sun glare from the east and the west along the southern elevation, a steel structure supports an elegantly folded aluminium screen and a glazed awning. This design component addresses both the existing HSB and the IHRI, to visually link the new and existing buildings and mark the new entry to the IHRI.