Facilities

Design

The innovative design of the Institute itself contributes to promoting interaction between research groups by virtue of its large, open-plan research laboratories with shared support facilities. The central provision of office, writing meeting and social spaces is also an essential feature in facilitating the interdisciplinary mission of the Institute.

Plan

The lower ground floor provides a 128-seater lecture theatre, specialist biomedical facilities and dedicated research technology laboratories for high-field nuclear magnetic resonance, protein crystallography as well as the imaging core facility. The central stores and workshops are also located in this area.

The ground floor of the building contains the offices of the Directorate, boardroom, a bioinformatics suite and a large social area, an essential feature in facilitating the Institute’s interdisciplinary mission.

Open plan and specialist research laboratories are located over three floors and range in size from 30 to 600 square metres. They are co-located with offices and reading spaces for principal investigators and their research teams.

The Institute provides a premier educational environment for postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers in life sciences. In addition to laboratory space, there are seminar rooms, meeting rooms, a multifunction interactive space facilitating computing, teaching and informal meetings as well as access to leading technology platforms unrivalled in Ireland.

Our early career researchers are embedded in the research environment from a very early stage and UCD Conway Institute graduates will be well equipped for careers in the expanding knowledge-based bioindustry and healthcare sectors.

Architecture

Scott Tallon Walker were the architectural firm chosen to design UCD Conway Institute due to their prior experience in the design of scientific buildings The architecture of the building comprises 9,617sqm in addition to an existing building of 1,676sqm. Designed to match the materials and expression of the original building, UCD Conway Institute was built using precast concrete panels with a light cream coloured finish similar to Portland Stone, broken by bands of natural grey granite at window head level to the major elevations. Grey granite has been used on the staircase gable with the roof and wing plant rooms clad in metal rainscreen panels of the same unit size.