Rahul Sharma (Editor)

William Gates Building, Cambridge

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Status
  
Complete

Completed
  
2001

Cost
  
20 million GBP

Top floor
  
2

Address
  
15 JJ Thomson Avenue

Opened
  
2001

Owner
  
University of Cambridge

William Gates Building, Cambridge wwwearchitectcoukimagesjpgscambridgewillia

Awards and prizes
  
Bronze Green Impact Award

People also search for
  
University of Cambridge, Ventura Hall, Cavendish Laboratory

The William Gates Building, or WGB, is a square building that houses the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, on the University's West Cambridge site in JJ Thomson Avenue south of the Madingley Road in Cambridge, England. Construction on the building began in 1999 and was completed in 2001 at a cost of £20 million. Opened by Maurice Wilkes, it was named after William H. Gates Sr., the father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided 50% of the money for the building's construction.

Contents

Building features

The building has the following features:

  • The glass wall in the "fishbowl," a communal seating area in the building, is decorated with the source code of the original EDSAC program
  • The building's main thoroughfare has tiles that match the binary, UTF-8 representation of 'Computer Laboratory — AD 2001 — ☺'
  • The fishbowl contains the original door to the Mathematical laboratory

    • Energy efficiency

    The William Gates Building aims to be energy-efficient. Its energy-saving measures include:

  • Aggressive sleep scheduling of desktop computers.
  • Use of a chilled-beam convection-based cooling system, with Oventrop valves, to cool rooms in the summer, and warm the floor above in the winter.
  • Turning off lights in corridors, and the street, using motion-sensors.

    • References

    William Gates Building, Cambridge Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA