CIBSE sponsors sustainable competition in East Midlands

Eighteen design teams were challenged to design a sustainable construction centre at Sherwood Energy Village. All teams had the opportunity to develop their skills in designing sustainable buildings with two free training sessions.

The teams entering the competition - which forms part of the East Midlands region's response to climate change - were asked to deliver a building that would be capable of functioning in a future climate, while reducing carbon emissions at all stages of the building's construction.

Once it is built, the sustainable construction centre is intended to be a regional and national centre of excellence for training in all elements of work in the built environment. The training provided at the centre will focus on bringing more sustainable methods of designing buildings into the mainstream. Judges included architect Sarah Wigglesworth, building services engineer and Carbon Coach Dave Hampton and Jo Wheeler from WWF's One Million Sustainable Homes Programme.

The prize was won by Mark Brear and Simon Brown, working as BB Design. Both studied interior architecture and interior design at Nottingham Trent University. Their scheme proposed "An architectural bookcase of construction" on the site of the closed Ollerton Colliery. The bookcase manifests itself as the major architectural element of the scheme to which the books (layers of information) are then applied.