Beaty Biodiversity Centre

The centre comprises a natural history museum, a natural history collection, research laboratories and offices. It is organized around three sides of the courtyard space, with the Beaty Biodiversity Museum occupying the west side along Main Mall. The principal exhibition space of the museum is a glass "lantern" within which an enormous skeleton of a Blue Whale is displayed, creating a public face for the complex towards the Mall. The extensive natural history collections, located beneath the central courtyard, are accessible directly from this exhibition space. Research laboratories and offices occupy the south and east sides. The laboratories are organized in regular bays along the east outer edge of the project, while the offices and meeting spaces are organized more casually around the courtyard to foster a sense of academic community. An open stair, located on the courtyard edge of the office and meeting spaces, threads through the project to interconnect informal social spaces.