National Nuclear Archive

Contract Value

£20M

Area

5,400m2

Completion

2017

Client

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Contract

NEC

Architects - Reiach and Hall Architects

Project Manager - Bilfinger GVA

Quantity Surveyor - Bilfinger GVA

Structural Engineer - ARUP Scotland

M&E Engineers - ARUP Scotland

Landscape Architect - Horner & MacLennan

Acoustician - ARUP Scotland

Lighting Designers - ARUP Scotland

Principle Designer - Keelagher Okey Kelin

Main Contractor - Morrison Construction - Highland

Sustainability / BREEAM Consultant - ARUP Scotland

FF&E - Reiach and Hall Architects

Signage / Graphics - Reiach and Hall Architects

Awards

AJ Awards - Editors Choice 2017

AJ Awards - Public Building of the Year 2017

Scottish Design Award - Leisure / Cultural Award 2018

Scottish Design Award - Chairmans Award 2018

EU Mies Award Longlisted 2018

RIAS Award 2018

RIBA National Award 2018

RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland 2018

Nucleus is the national archive for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the Caithness County Archive. The building contains archival spaces, document retrieval and processing areas along with administrative and public spaces, including a community room and exhibition area. The building will contain 30 million digital records and 28,000 linear metres of paper and photographic records concerning the development and decommissioning of the UK’s civil nuclear industry.

The site is on the outskirts of Wick, Caithness, the Flow Country, a land that is as much liquid as solid. The site is adjacent to Wick airport. The immediate environment is semi-industrial, low lying and very exposed.

The brief and expectation was of a large shed with associated administrative offices in the manner of an out of town industrial estate. The design sets out to transform this ubiquitous building type into a building that responds to its northern location and cultural significance of the brief while adopting the material language and economy of the shed. A critical ambition of the brief was to visually open the building up to the public and promote community use. The building must invite the local, the expert and the visitor alike, the entrance sequence plays a huge part in this ambition.

The design responds to this vast landscape with a bold and simple strategy. The design imagines a singular low triangular form that enters into a dialogue with the landscape not by merging with it but by quietly standing apart from its immediate context, maintaining a dignified and enigmatic presence.

The basic functions, to preserve archive material and to enable access to it, can be read in the construction and form of the building; a double-height cellular concrete construction layered with a double skin roof contains the repository accommodation. The inherent mass provides environmental stability and security. In contrast, the single storey ancillary accommodation is housed within a light filled open-plan wing of lightweight construction.

The prismatic building plan is organised along a north south axis. The plan is perforated by a sequence of shallow lochans separating the public and archivist spaces from the archive spaces which align with the western boundary. The single storey wing faces north east with views towards the coastline and the horizon. The two building masses mesh around the lochans, forming a series of protected water courts.

The building is clad in extruded silver anodised ribbed cladding and louvres, these finely ‘’drawn’’ facades respond to the subtle changes of light that is experienced throughout the day in this northern territory.

Nucleus achieved BREEAM excellent and BIM Level 2.