Project story · Red Sea Region
A calm face for a working campus
In the Red Sea desert, MERC puts a quiet stone building with a sharp canopy at the front of a larger campus for mineral research and engineering.
By byJOOM · MERC · Industrial and research
A centre for exploration research
MERC is a mineral exploration and engineering research centre. It is for research and engineering teams who study minerals and develop the equipment used to explore for them: geoscience laboratories, fabrication and assembly halls, prototype and testing areas, secure data rooms and offices, with controlled access and separate logistics routes.
A calm, enclosed front
A calm, enclosed stone-clad building with a sharp canopy and a glazed entrance, flanked by louvred wings, sits at the front of the campus. It is the face of a working place. The pictures show the entrance as a tall glazed slot between stone walls, with the canopy cut at a clean angle above it.
Louvres for the sun
Solar shading, insulated walls and dust-resistant details respond to the desert climate. The louvred wings take the glare out of the sun and give the building a rhythm of vertical lines. Warm stone wraps the rest, and the mountains behind take the same colour.
Secure, but not forbidding
Secure perimeters protect confidential work, and logistics routes are separate from visitors. The challenge is to be careful without being unfriendly, and the design handles it by making the public part of the building calm and open and putting the secure part behind it in the wider campus.
Corrosion-resistant materials, thermally efficient envelopes and robust services for a demanding environment.
A working campus behind
From the hillside above, the larger campus is visible: plant and service yards, halls and wings laid along the perimeter road. The front building is a small part of a bigger working machine, and the design lets that be seen.
Designed for a demanding place
Corrosion-resistant materials, thermally efficient envelopes and robust services suit a demanding environment. MERC will endure because it has been designed for the conditions it will meet, not for the ones in a brochure.
This article describes design intention. The images are design visualisations, not photographs of a finished building. See the Disclaimers.