Standing proudly as a sentinel outside the Francis Crick Institute at St Pancras, Conrad Shawcross’ five-metre high sculpture ‘Paradigm’ could be representative of many things – the paradigm shift in biomedical research which the Crick Institute aims to achieve, the paradigm shift that St Pancras has undergone from its original role in 1868 as the London terminus for trains going north to the Midlands to, in 2007, the terminus for trains going under the Channel tunnel to Paris, Brussels and beyond, unimaginable when it was originally built, and also the vast changes in the surrounding area, once full of warehouses and industrial sheds-, the sculpture’s very material and construction celebrates the industrial heritage of the area.

Weighing 27 tonnes, ‘Paradigm’ was commissioned by the Francis Crick Institute and funded by the Wellcome Trust, one of the partners in this unique research enterprise where collaboration is the name of the game with six partners including three universities all working together to find new ways to diagnose, prevent and modern diseases including cancer, heart disease, stroke and neurogenerative diseases and, in doing so, maintain the UK’s position for leading world class research and support the UK economy, ambitions determined long before Brexit.

State of the art laboratories are designed to be flexible and adaptable, with glass walls allowing transparency across the building in particular to the central spaces which rise like the nave of a grand cathedral and are where the different scientists come together to relax, discuss and exchange ideas away from the laboratory.

Designed by HOK with PLP Architecture, a substantial part of the building is below ground to reduce its height so that it respects the adjacent station and British Library. Public engagement and transparency is important with seminar spaces for public events and a double-height glazed exhibition space open to the public, currently ‘Deconstructing Patterns’ – a collaboration between scientists from the Crick and three artists examining three scientific patterns from the human body which have been reinterpreted as art works.  It is by looking at how to deconstruct and reconstruct patterns that medical scientists hope to solve some of today’s problems, which takes us back to Conrad Shawcross’ ‘Paradigm’.