The Centre for Emerging, Endemic and Exotic Diseases (CEEED) was created from a series of dilapidated and poorly performing offices and storerooms, within a 1960s concrete framed building on the Royal Veterinary College (RVC)’s Hawkshead Campus. The challenge presented to ArchitecturePLB was not only to create new laboratory spaces to supplement the existing facilities within the clinical block, but to do so in such a way to lift this part of the campus whilst engendering a new and distinct identity for the centre.

The vision was for a fresh, new and professional home for public health researchers who had previously been housed disparately among many departments. Its agenda was to bring together the laboratory and desk based researchers into one centre, becoming one of the first centres internationally to do so. New researchers and students will be able to utilise the category 3 laboratories, open plan office area and attend seminars and meetings all under one roof and within a space that cleverly claims an existing stair core to open up the centre to interaction.

This research ‘hub’ combines state-of-the-art facilities, including high biosecurity laboratories for infection and immunity research, alongside offices and meeting rooms equipped with teleconferencing facilities to support and encourage the dialogue between researchers, linking the Camden campus-based researchers and beyond to the Centre.