Kadans Science Partner & Canary Wharf Group

Canary Wharf Group, developer of Europe's largest urban regeneration project, builds and manages property and real estate in Canary Wharf. They have formed a joint venture with Kadans Science Partner. Kadans’ mission is to build and support innovative ecosystems. With industry-leading intelligence, knowledge and experience Kadans offers state-of-the-art specialist accommodation and access to an ecosystem of industry-leading businesses, to optimise our tenants’ success and stimulate innovation together.

Kadans and CWG recently announced that they had formed a joint venture to establish a new UK Life Sciences cluster at Canary Wharf. This new proposition, The London Innovation Centre, is the latest milestone in the first phase of ecosystem creation. The process is running concurrently to the joint venture’s development of 823,000 sq ft GIA commercial health and life science focused building, the largest in Europe, on the 3.3-hectare North Quay at Canary Wharf which is expected to be ready in 2026.

Detailed design and development to the approval of the professional team, to convert shell & core office space into the new CL2 wet lab innovation centre for Kadans and The Canary Wharf Group. The London Innovation Centre provides much needed access to fully fitted, best in class laboratories and amenity rich space for developing life science companies.

Bulb were successful in winning a two-stage tender to complete this project for Kadans, who had leased two floors from The Canary Wharf Group. Their new London Innovation Centre required the conversion of shell and core office space into CL2 wet laboratory space.

For Kadans we converted floors four and five, totalling 38,000 sq ft, at the BREEAM outstanding 20 Water Street, into flexible, fully serviced CL2 wet labs ranging in size from 200 sq ft to 5,000+ sq ft. Using Kadans unique proposition tenants will be able to occupy from a single lab bench to 5,000+ sq ft.

The Innovation Centre tenants benefit from access to shared equipment facilities including autoclaves, glass wash, -80 freestanding freezer and on-floor LN2 storage as well as an in-house Lab Technician to support their growth.

The key to the conversion of two floors for lab use was the creation of two additional plant rooms, with new air handling units on each floor and external louvres to the façade. Plant rooms also house a CAT 5 booster set with drip tray and leak detection.

The floors were divided into various sizes of laboratories with some rooms serviced in a way which allows some flexibility of use. The lab areas required sprinkler and fire alarm adaptions and the installation of metal ceiling tiles.

Office areas included reception area, meeting rooms, breakout space and tea point. These had exposed ceilings with some supplementary acoustic baffles.

New furniture was provided throughout both the laboratory and office areas.