Te Toki a Rata School of Biological Sciences

Victoria University of Wellington wanted the pre-eminent place to study biological sciences in New Zealand, a gateway to its Kelburn science precinct that could draw students and researchers from here and overseas. That meant a building full of demanding spaces, PC1 and PC2 laboratories, temperature-controlled rooms and chemical storage, on a long, narrow and steep site running through a live, working campus.

At roughly 12,500 square metres and 140 metres long, the fully glazed building had to hold complex laboratory services and stay running after an earthquake, on a site with little room and a campus that could not stop around it.

Designed around the scientists

RCP managed the project from feasibility through to completion. To get the brief right, RCP put the scientists and academics at the centre of the design from the start, including a study tour of university science departments in Australia to sharpen what the building needed to do.

RCP then led a federated BIM model, one of the first large Wellington projects to work this way, to coordinate the building's heavy laboratory services and hold down variations through construction. RCP also procured the specialist laboratory equipment and timed its installation mid-build, so the commissioning programme was never put at risk.

Completed in 2018, Te Toki a Rata is an IL3 facility with a low-damage structure, its repairable dampers taking the load in an earthquake so the building keeps working with only local disruption. It now anchors the science precinct it was built to lead.