Aluminium fins wrap the New Science Building at University of Hertfordshire

Laboratories are mostly serious and relatively dull architecrual affairs but in Sheppard Robson’s New Science Building, at the University of Hertfordshire, louvres wrap the building in an aluminium veil that suggests intrigue and activity within.

The 9,000m² £30m New Science Building sees architecture and designing firm Sheppard Robson revisiting the laboratory format in a manner that is visually and technologically distinct from the firm’s previous work at Bristol. Yet the new building extends the trend of high-profile laboratory architecture even further.

As Sheppard Robson partner Tony Poole explains: “The building had to do more than provide technically excellent and controlled spaces within a box. We wanted the architectural language to be a beacon for the university’s ambitions, with a finely tuned and bold response that did not compromise on efficiency.”


Each floor of the building is expressed externally as a discernible layer, neatly trimmed with a steel channel at its top and bottom, between which a continuous series of vertical fins are fixed. The fins fully encase three sides of the building with the remaining north elevation faced in concrete and glass.

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The fins are absolutely central to the building’s aesthetic and environmental aspirations. Each one is a minutely perforated expanded aluminium mesh panel that acts as a rainscreen separated from the building’s external glass envelope by an accessible maintenance gantry that wraps around the building. Consequently, the fins act as a vertical brise-soleil that provide shading to the three elevations of the building most exposed to solar glare while admitting as much daylight as possible to the interior.

The project is the anchor for a wider campus improvement masterplan.