The Most Sustainable in Britain

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) unveiled the winners of the 2012 RIBA Awards. RIBA Awards for architectural excellence were presented to 50 buildings in the UK and 9 buildings elsewhere in the EU. The shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize for the building of the year will be drawn from the 59 RIBA Award winners. Among them are the educational and cultural institutions, social housing, the former factory and recreation center.

THE EXELLENT DESIGN

A university’s design school has won a national award for its architectural excellence.

The building at Loughborough University, which won one of the top awards at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ annual ceremony, was praised for its use of space, natural daylight and a modest budget.

The building, designed by Burwell Deakins Architects, was one of only 59 nationally to pick up the prestigious Riba Award. It also won regional prizes for building of the year, sustainability and client of the year. It was praised for combining teaching spaces, laboratories and computer spaces and for its sustainability.

The building cost £14.5 million, which is considered a modest budget for a 7,921 sq m development which included state-of-the-art technology.

This is a 7,920 square metre building comprising teaching spaces, research laboratories, workshops, computer suites, offices and cafe, and is located within the existing university campus. It is a deep plan building on a roughly triangular footprint.

Environmentally the inclusion of chimneys within the heart of the deep plan has helped the building to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating. Structurally, the choice of concrete works well, offering both a robust and beautiful quality of finish to the interior spaces.

Overall what impresses is the quality of natural daylight, the ease of circulation through the building, the integration of a simple but sophisticated approach to servicing and the overall quality of materials and attention to detail - all on a quite modest budget.

Professor Tracy Bhamra, dean of the Loughborough Design School, said: “The award is a huge boost for the university and our school and we are very excited about it: “The architects have created the lecture theatres in such a way that they encourage group work. We focused on sustainability as  we teach our students about it."

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Materials provided by RIBA