William Gates Building, Cambridge

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
General information
StatusCompleted
LocationCambridge, England
Address15 JJ Thomson Avenue
Coordinates52.210925°N 0.092022°E / 52.210925; 0.092022 (William Gates Building, Cambridge)
Completed2001
Cost£20 million
OwnerUniversity of Cambridge
Height
Top floor2
Awards and prizesBronze 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 — ☺'
  • 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.

See also

References

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