It makes sense that you wouldn’t train engineers about robotics in a barn or by a lake. Singapore-based Race Robotics commissioned architects Ministry of Design (MOD) to create a robotics lab and training facility, according to Dezeen. The result is a futuristic space that could pass for Tron‘s family room.
The 2,615-square-foot Race Robotics Laboratory serves as a branding and spatial experience for the company. The facility will be used to educate and introduce robotics engineers into automating existing manufacturing industries. Various modular robots will also be on display.
Functional flexibility was the primary need. Race Robotics needed a large, continuous open space with smaller cluster-sized areas for hands-on training.
Visitors are immediately aware they have arrived at an out-of-the-ordinary space when they visit the Race Robotics Lab. The first effect is one of intentional disorientation.
The feeling begins when guests step off the elevator into the lab’s lobby. The area is all black, except for a lighted company logo and angular lighted lines that “disorient the floor from the ceiling.”
Directly off the lobby, visitors enter the open lab space through an enlarged doorway, another unexpected visual effect that sets them up for the lighted, angular planes within. The walls and ceiling are painted black and the gleaming floor is also black.
MOD built a “second skin” of black aluminum screen cladding inside the lab. The inner layer is broken into separate facets. Each facet consists of parallel stacked aluminum tubes and custom LED light strips. All cables, outlets, and other mechanicals needed for the robotics lab are behind the inner skin where they will not be visible. Access hatches in the inner skin placed around the room so personnel can get to the sockets and other mechanical devices.
The varied angles play with the perception of proportion and direction, creating visual nooks for small groups. Visitors are supposed to get an immediate sense of “industrial automation and precision,” according to MOD.
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