Facility architecture encompasses buildings designed for specialised technical or institutional functions — research laboratories, data centres, water treatment plants, power stations, and other infrastructure where the building's form is dictated almost entirely by its operational requirements.
These buildings are architecture at its most instrumental: every dimension, material choice, and spatial relationship serves a measurable technical purpose. Yet the best facility buildings — Kahn's Salk Institute, Grimshaw's Eden Project, Foster's Stansted Airport — demonstrate that functional rigour and architectural quality are not mutually exclusive.
