William Gates Building, Cambridge
Building in Cambridge, England
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.[1][2][3] 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.[4] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided 50% of the money for the building's construction.
| William Gates Building | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Interactive map of the William Gates Building area | |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Location | Cambridge, England, 15 JJ Thomson Avenue |
| Coordinates | 52.2110°N 0.0919°E |
| Completed | 2001 |
| Cost | £20 million |
| Owner | University of Cambridge |
| Height | |
| Top floor | 2 |
| Design and construction | |
| Awards and prizes | Bronze Green Impact Award |
Building features
The building has the following features:
- The glass wall in the "fishbowl," a communal seating area in the building, is decorated with a paper-tape representation of the original EDSAC "Initial Orders" (boot program) written by David Wheeler and of a program written by Maurice Wilkes in 1949 to compute squares[5]
- The building's main thoroughfare, called "The Street", has tiles that match the binary, UTF-8 representation of 'Computer Laboratory — AD 2001 — ☺'[citation needed]
- The fishbowl contains the original door to the Mathematical laboratory[6]
Energy efficiency
The William Gates Building aims to be energy-efficient.[7] Its energy-saving measures include:[8]
- 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.