The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) facility houses approximately 675 people.
The vision was to create a world-class iconic building symbolising the progressive nature of the research.
SAHMRI’s façade comprises 15,000 triangular glass/aluminium panels on a hybrid steel diagrid and curtainwall organic form.
The selection of a triangular diagrid structure was integrated early on to optimise conflicting requirements of large spans and stringent vibration requirements for laboratory equipment.
The façade skin maximises natural daylight, minimises glare and energy use by incorporating sun-shading, rather than as an applied element. This contributed substantially to the achievement of a LEED Gold rating.
The triangulated structural steel diagrid achieves the spanning requirements of up to 40m wide and 40m tall with no additional support across the two atria and was originally conceived as a horizontally spanning system. However, it was soon realised that penalisation was required for fabrication and construction economy.
The challenge was to maintain the vision of the diagrid without compromising it structurally.
The developed triangulation and sunshade design used parametric modelling tools RHINO and Grasshopper software to integrate environmental, programmatic, and formal requirements to generate a shading system that changes accordingly. These tools were also able to rationalise the triangular geometry to enable the number of uniquely shaped modular façade panels to be reduced from over 300 down to just 20, yielding substantial savings in production complexity.
This allowed it to deal with sunlight, heat load, glare, and wind noise, while maintaining views and daylight.
A key element in the façade design was an early planning decision locating major services on the western face to protect the building from afternoon solar heat gain.
This enabled the skin to become translucent to reflect colour off the inner services wall.