A new plant science laboratory, the Sainsbury Laboratory, will provide a state of the art research facility within the Botanic Garden. It will house 120 scientists, supported by more than 30 additional staff, studying plant development in world class laboratory facilities. At the heart of the building will be the University Herbarium, which contains over one million pressed and dried plant specimens from all over the world, including those collected by Darwin on the Beagle. The project will also include associated glasshouses and plant growth rooms, extensive new landscaping and a new café and meeting room for visitors to the Botanic Garden.

The design draws on two principal concepts which reinforce the sense that the Garden itself provides the setting for the research: integration of building and landscape, and organisation of the building around a 'thinking path', which creates connections between the scientists socially, and between the scientists and the environment of the Garden.

Experienced as a series of landscaped spaces "entry court, central courtyard and formal lawn" every aspect of the building will take into account the fact that the surrounding Botanic Garden provides the setting and the inspiration for research.

External walls reinforce this permeability, using glazing shaded by rhythmic arrangements of columns that enhance views into and out of the building. The main working spaces will be on the first floor. They will have generous natural light and views across the Garden.

Formal and informal meeting places and cafe facilities are positioned on the internal route around the central court. This route which connects laboratories and social places also extends out into the network of pathways within the Botanic Garden itself.

The project meets Cambridge City Council's planning requirement for 10% renewable on-site energy generation through use of photovoltaic panels and has been designed to achieve a BREEAM 'Excellent'.

Construction works commenced on site in the middle of 2008 and the project is planned for completion by the end of 2010.

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