The European Spallation Source will provide 100,000 square meters of laboratories, offices, meeting spaces, and a lecture hall along with a 600 meter long proton accelerator and a 180 metres long neutron hall. Compared to other such facilities like the Large Hadron Collider, which is 27 km in circumference, the ESS’s accelerator is considerably smaller, but it’s planned to be much more powerful. Using new technologies like spallation technology, the ESS will be able to more efficiently create brighter neutron beams. The facility will also provide living quarters and guest residences and a public visitor centre.
Henning Larsen Architects is collaborating with COBE and SLA on this project. The team is also aided by engineering comapnies Buro Happold, NNE Pharmaplan and Transsolar. The project will feature a lush garden setting filled with recreational areas, varied landscapes and wetlands, which will absorb rainwater and encourage biodiversity. “Just as the international science hub that will be developed, the surface of the landscape will be an interwoven patchwork of different fields and meadows,” says Stig L. Andersson, Creative Director at SLA. “Wild-growing vegetation and fences provide spatial distinction as well as safety barriers. All rainwater management will be handled by a new wetland landscape of lakes, marshes and meadows that also create a dynamic and ever-changing visual and spatial connection between ESS, Max IV and Lund Science Village.”
Work on the project is expected to start soon with research commencing in 2019, and the full facility will be completed by 2025. The ESS expects that 2,000-4,000 researchers will visit the campus every year and the research done there will contribute in many fields of science and technology from medicine to archaeology and sustainable energy sources.
Via WAN
Images ©Henning Larsen Architects
