Design of the first magnetic target fusion facility in Culham by AL_A,
Architecture firm AL_A has designed and developed the world’s first magneto-target fusion facility,
for Canadian energy company General Fusion in Culham, UK.
The collaboration between the two companies began last year with the development of a prototype fusion facility,
as the company wanted to transform how the world revitalized by replicating the process that powers the sun and stars.
The project, which the company has dubbed, the Fusion Demonstration Plant (FDP),
has been submitted to be built inside the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) in Culham.
The project will be used to showcase the company’s technology,
which provides sustainable solutions for carbon-neutral energy.
The project puts creative leadership in charge of designing a “first-of-its-kind FDP facility that is open and transparent,
and the pilot plant is a statement of belief in a better and greener future.”
Design of the first magnetic target fusion facility in Culham by AL_A
building features
The building will be highly efficient and will embody the technological optimism of fusion to solve the world’s energy problems,
and display a confident message to the public about the extraordinary potential of this technology.
General Fusion’s objective in constructing this building is to develop a UK consolidation industry
and create a ‘potential transformative project’.
The project is designed as a high-efficiency building,
aiming to gain the technological advantage of integration to solve the world’s energy problems on a global scale.
The reactor is to take on a symbolic form at the center of the design,
expressing the extraordinary potential within.
The building will express a new relationship between technology and nature,
and will be a major boost to General Fusion’s plans to develop a consolidation industry in the UK.
Culham will be home to this cutting-edge and potentially transformative project,
as fusion energy has great potential as an unlimited, low-carbon energy source.
With a total area of 11,400 square metres,
the building with its state-of-the-art facilities will house meeting,
gathering and exhibition spaces for a diverse audience including scholars, politicians, investors and the general public.
The Fusion Display Plant (FDP) in Culham is the culmination of more than a decade of advances in General Fusion technology, and marks a milestone on the company’s path to commercialization.
General Fusion’s MTF technology will create practical and cost-effective fusion conditions in power plant related scales.
This is in addition to improving the economics of fusion power production,
leading to the subsequent design of commercial fusion and the establishment of a pilot plant.
Construction will take place in 2022, and the facility is due to be operational about three years later,
as General Fusion and UKAEA intend to collaborate on a range of fusion energy technologies to design and operate the power plant.
Design of the first magnetic target fusion facility in Culham by AL_A
Architectural Engineering Company AL_A
It is a multi-award winning architectural practice founded by RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levitt
with directors Ho-Yin Ng, Alice Dietsch and Maximiliano Arrocet.
The company has taken an intuitive and strategic approach to design since it was founded in 2019,
collaborating with many ambitious, visionary clients.
The company designs urban projects, not just buildings and projects that express the identity of an institution, city or nation.
The company has completed many distinctive projects such as the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition in London in 2017,
which is the largest construction project for Victoria and Albert in more than 100 years.
And the MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2016.
