This week I got an email from Queen Mary University of London inviting alumni such as myself to discover The Centre of the Cell. Built among the labs of Bart’s and the London in Whitechapel, it is the world’s first science exhibition to be based within a working research facility. The Centre was officially opened in September 2009: unfortunately for me this was some years after I graduated, but London Open House Weekend 2009 finally gave me a chance to visit and take some photographs…

The building itself is made largely of glass and its transparency is deliberate: nothing is shrouded in mystery here. The scientists in this lab want people to watch them at work, and want to entice them in to find out more about it.

Once inside the first thing visitors see is the aptly-named Nucleus cafe. Its blood cell-shaped seating is the first taste of the building’s Inner Space theme which continues with wall decorations, light fittings and even entire rooms designed to look like cells and their organelles.

The spiky black neuron suspended from the ceiling looks imposing at first, until a closer look reveals it has an entrance: this is in fact a room which scientists are more than welcome to use for meetings. Each of the Centre’s unusual designs have a practical purpose which isn’t always immediately apparent. It appears to have been designed in the spirit of scientists whose research is branded “esoteric”- and who want to encourage their critics to understand the practical applications of their work.

The giant orange blastocyst hanging opposite is the visitor’s centre. Ambient music and soft light filtering through its orange walls give it an appropriately womb-like feel, while inside there is plenty to stimulate the mind:

As well as videos, games and interactive exhibits, visitors can also get up close with tissue samples, examining them just as the working scientists are doing on the floors below.

The Centre has many important messages to convey, and not all of them are aimed at visitors: the open-plan labs (the blue lab benches can be seen below) were designed to encourage open discussion between research teams, with the central meeting area as a very public place where they can share ideas and plan collaborations.

The taught students are treated to one final piece of innovative design: the main lecture theatre. Given the overall theme I assumed the colourful seating had been intended to look like a Southern blot or a DNA microarray, but our guide told us the design actually represented poppies growing in No Man’s Land. Here the connection with science appears to be with research in peacetime: scientists working not to kill but to cure, and working hard to prove the value of their work to those who have grown to fear scientific progress.

At this point of the tour I was reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s Hippocratic Oath for Scientists. Hopefully the students who get to study here will be similarly inspired, and will learn to realise the importance of communicating their findings and encouraging the wider community to support them.

You can find out more about the Centre of the Cell from the lab’s designers, researchers and students in this video on QMUL’s YouTube channel. Check out the excellent Design With Intent blog for more on architecture of control.