Research

Research & Technology

Instinctual Lab and our engineering groups develop and test the methods our buildings rely on. Most of it is practical: a window that has to hold back the sea, a foundation that has to stay frozen, a room that has to keep working when everything outside has failed.

01

Pressure hulls and one-atmosphere interiors

Underwater, every room is a pressure vessel. We design steel and composite hulls that keep people at surface pressure, and the acrylic windows that let them see out. Acrylic creeps slowly under load, so we test full-size window sections in a pressure tank at our Rotterdam studio for months before a design is approved, and we fit every installed window with strain sensors.

Section through an underwater station: a one-atmosphere hull with an acrylic window rests on the seabed twenty-two metres below sea level, linked to a pavilion at the surface by an access tube. ±0.00 SEA LEVEL SEABED 1 ATM ACRYLIC WINDOW −22.0
02

Deep ground: caverns, rafts and stations

Going down starts with understanding the rock or soil well enough to trust it. We map the joints in rock before excavation, design caverns along the strongest bands, and use transfer rafts and barrettes when a building has to bridge something already in the ground: a tunnel, a sewer, a river bed. For the deepest work we design with the tunnelling engineers from the first day.

Section through deep ground: a tower on a transfer raft that bridges a rail tunnel, with piles either side, and a rock cavern reached by a shaft. ±0.00 GROUND TRANSFER RAFT TUNNEL CAVERN −96
03

Protective envelopes

Some buildings must resist blast, forced entry, flood or extreme wind. We design protection as a set of layers, starting with distance and landscape, then the façade, then the structure, then the plan, so that the building stays open and calm to the people who use it. Our structures are designed so that the loss of a single element cannot cause a progressive collapse.

Protection as four nested layers: the site, the envelope, the structure and the plan. SITE ENVELOPE STRUCTURE PLAN
04

Closed-loop environments

On the ice, under the sea or deep underground, a building is its own life support. Our Environments group designs air revitalisation, water recovery, heat storage and power with redundancy at every step, so that a failure becomes a maintenance task rather than an emergency. At Nunatak Station, one heat loop warms every room, melts the snow for water and runs the base on about half the fuel of a conventional one.

A closed loop: air, water, heat and power each feed the next, so that heat, water and power are each used more than once. AIR WATER HEAT POWER CLOSED LOOP WASH WATER TREATED AND REUSED
05

Wind, earthquakes and motion

Tall and seismic buildings are designed to move, and to move comfortably. We shape towers in the wind tunnel, add tuned mass dampers where the motion would be felt, and separate whole buildings from the ground with isolation bearings where earthquakes are expected. Each structure is checked against the motion its occupants would feel, not only against the forces it must carry.

A tall tower with a tuned mass damper near its top, swaying in the wind, beside a low building separated from the ground by isolation bearings. WIND TUNED MASS DAMPER ISOLATION BEARINGS ±0.00
06

The sensor layer

Every building we have completed since 2018 carries a network of sensors in its structure, envelope and systems. The data tells us how our assumptions hold up over years, not months, and it is the most valuable thing we bring to the next project. We share it with researchers wherever our clients allow.

A building section with sensors in its structure, envelope and basement, logged every ten minutes. ±0.00 SENSOR, LOGGED EVERY 10 MIN

07

Facilities

Our Rotterdam studio houses a model workshop, a 3-metre pressure test tank and a climate chamber that runs from −50 °C to +60 °C.

Full-size window sections, façade panels and foundation details are built and tested here before they go to site, and the workshop makes the models we use to explain our buildings to clients and to each other.

A full-size acrylic window section clamped into the pressure test tank
A full-size window section in the pressure test tank, Rotterdam
White study models of a cut-away mountain, a tower and an underwater station in the model workshop
Study models in the model workshop

08

Publications

  • Acrylic window creep at 22 metres: eighteen months of measurement2026Instinctual Lab
  • Drift walls: keeping snow off a sheltered polar station2025Instinctual Lab
  • Passive thermosiphons for alpine foundations2024Instinctual Lab
  • Rammed earth in hot-arid laboratories: a test series2023Instinctual Lab
  • Transfer rafts over operational tunnels2022Instinctual Lab

Papers are available to research institutions on request: lab@instinctualgroup.com