University of Bradford – Chemistry Laboratory Furniture

Contract Value:- £63,500
Completed:- September 2015
Location:- Bradford, West Yorkshire

• • Full Cantilever Laboratory Furniture
  • Suspended Drawer and Cupboard Units
  • Custom Designed Island Shelving Units
  • Electrical DDA Benches

Bowman Riley Architects approached iab in November 2014 asking to provide a design and quotation for a furniture layout in a set of chemistry and biology laboratory’s. This was a job at Bradford University. Originally the brief was to create a chemistry lab furniture design to accommodate roughly 36 students, with at least 2 of these being designed to suit standards of the disability discrimination act. The furniture was to be plinth mounted with knee spaces for students with a ratio of 1:2 mixed between drawers and cupboards. Also included were cast epoxy resin sinks.

After a few meetings with both the architects and the client. A choice was made to go with a full cantilever laboratory furniture system for their chemistry laboratory furniture Our standard for cabinets are mobile units however by the client’s choice, they wanted to suspended drawers and cupboards. This was to make it more efficient for cleaning however still gave them the option to shuffle around the cabinets.
As the client required the room to be DDA compliant, they needed to install a DDA laboratory style table. There were a couple of options for this (see our DDA Laboratory Table for more information) The client requested this as they wanted the laboratories to be suitable for everyone. They choose the static electrically operated height adjustable version.

Another requirement of the clients was a custom built island shelving system – this was created with a fixed multi-tier shelving unit, vertical divider panels and under shelf task lighting. The divider panels were used to mount the electrical sockets for easy access.