WELLCOME GHOST BUILDING

CLIENT: WELLCOME TRUST

When the Sanger Centre first moved to the Hinxton Hall site in the early 1990s it was to occupy the Hall itself, and a 1950s complex built as the research laboratory for industrial metallurgy innovator Tube Investments Ltd. The UK team of the global Human Genome Project raced to sequence the Human Genome in the ill-suited' ‘Goldfish Bowl’ of the Tube Investments engineering hall, office partitions set up underneath the overhead travelling crane. As todays Wellcome Genome Campus developed, the Tube Investments building came down. To mark the 25th anniversary of this important and fondly-remembered phase of UK genomic science, we were commissioned to deliver our concept for a ‘ghost building’ installation. HIstoric plans and LIDAR readings were used to carefully locate a set of sculpted doors and building ‘corners’ in their original locations along the frontage of the old building. The metal shapes are formed of a filigree letters - a sequence of bases from chromosome 22, produced in its entirety in this first phase of the work. Matching panels explain the work and stories behind it to conference and open day visitors, and todays campus teams.