Timelapse of SIMU’s Construction
To preserve the memory of building Europe’s largest simulation centre, we decided from the very beginning to document the entire process. And so, during the early stages of construction, I found myself diving into a whole new area of expertise – how to capture a growing building over time.
Our first attempt involved setting up a battery-powered 720p timelapse camera on the roof of the Department of Anatomy in July 2018. It was a low-cost solution, sealed in a waterproof housing. But there was a catch – the AA batteries needed replacing every few weeks, which meant regular visits to the rooftop, an area where access was otherwise restricted.
By October, we upgraded the setup with a lead-acid battery pack to extend the operating time. It sat in a heavy-duty case which, for obvious reasons, we soon nicknamed “The Bomb”. I remember handwritting out a label with “Power Supply” and my contact details, just in case someone mistook it for something far more serious. To be honest, I was quite worried that the bomb squad would eventually turn up.
It quickly became clear that this wasn’t a long-term solution. We needed something more reliable if we were to cover the full two years of construction. So, at the end of October, we installed a PoE camera from AXIS – a much more robust option. This involved running about 100 metres of network cabling from a server room on the first floor, up through the building to the roof, with one galvanic isolator and the help of a patient colleague from Campus Management.
To say, we used the same camera again in 2024 for the BioPharma Hub timelapse project.
Eventually, we removed the battery-powered camera and even added another PoE camera on a second building. Thanks to this setup, you can now watch two years of construction condensed into just a few minutes.
Editing the footage became one of the very first tasks of our newly formed AV/IT team. Way over a million images were captured (the camera snapped a photo every minute, even at night), and selecting what to include in the final cut was a real challenge. It took us nearly three weeks to shape the raw footage into something we were happy to share.
(Article published to mark the 4th anniversary of SIMU’s opening.)