The Sir Ludwig Guttmann Health & Wellbeing Centre has been shortlisted for the ‘AJ100 Building of the Year’ award.

The Centre creates a landmark civic building on the 2012 Olympics Athletes’ Village site, which will also provide a range of community facilities and a health centre for the people of East Village and Leyton for years to come.

Crouch Hill Community Park has been shortlisted for the ‘AJ100 Value Excellence’ award. The project includes Ashmount Primary School and Bowlers Nursery, and the refurbishment of the Cape Youth Centre to include an Ecology Centre, all set within a new community park.

Penoyre & Prasad have been shortlisted for the ‘AJ100 Client Choice’ award.

The AJ will be revealing the rest of their shortlists over the next few days and the AJ100 awards ceremony will take place on 8th May at 8 Northumberland Avenue.

Ruskin College, Oxford has also been shortlisted for an RIBA South Regional Award.

RIBA Awards recognise quality and innovative architecture. The shortlisted buildings will be assessed by a regional jury with the winners announced on the evening of Wednesday 12 June 2013. Regional winners will then be considered for a highly-coveted RIBA National Award, announced on the same evening.

The event will be held on Thursday 18th April between 08:30-10:00 and is free to attend but places are limited so must be reserved in advance here.

Our event will be part of the ‘Delivering a Green City’ theme, which showcases real-life exemplar projects and initiatives that have in practice encompassed how to best deliver sustainable buildings for the long term, including post-occupancy evaluation and performance data, finance and procurement, regulation mechanisms versus market and Green Deal and its potential impact.

Green Sky Thinking 2013′s week-long programme (15-19 April) will feature 50 B2B sustainability-focused events aiming to:

• Map current sustainability exemplars and issues in the industry.
• Strengthen cross-sector collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Extend involvement of end-user and decision-maker participants.
• Offer companies’ the opportunity to profile leadership in sustainable business.

The UCL-sponsored academy for 1,150 pupils offers specialisms in Science and Engineering within ‘Superstudio’ open-plan learning clusters, building upon direct input and mentoring from Universtity College London staff and students. Co-located with the Swiss Cottage Specialist SEN School to the South, the scheme is a lesson in maximising tight urban land use whilst boldly and positively contributing to the local cityscape.

The Academy has achieved a BREEAM rating of Excellent.

“Thank you for creating such a beautiful building. The response from students, parents and staff has been amazing. The care you have taken to make sure the building has been designed with learning in mind, is immediately obvious to everyone who comes in.”

Geraldine Davies, UCL Principal

Further reading:

• UCL News includes further details about the Academy and an interview with UCL Principal, Geraldine Davies
• Professor Michael Worton’s article in The Guardian’s Higher Education Network.

Working with Arups, the facade of the 34 storey iconic Tower is being cleaned, restored and transformed ensuring it is fit for the next 30 years, reducing the building’s overall energy consumption and securing the future of the building.

Visit the Guy’s & St Thomas’ website to view progress on site.

The event will be held at RIBA London and is part of Venice Takeaway. Click here for full details or to book a place.

The scheme includes the construction of a 5,200m2 5 storey extension to the existing 1960s Brutalist Templeman Library, the centrepiece of the campus, and its renovation to unlock issues of access, circulation and connectivity.

Click here for further information about the project.

The series of lectures aims to allow students to engage with and learn from the experiences of thinkers and designers within the world of practice and covers subjects such as environmental performance, development economics, installation art and communications and the media.

The 170 one, two and three bedroom private apartments above 3,400m2 of primary healthcare and social services facilities, basement car-parking and retail units is due to complete in 2014. The building provides a grand civic gateway to Wormholt Park, the park in turn provides vistas from the generous centralised waiting areas within the health centre. For further details, click here.

The Design, Architecture & Sustainability Conference will cover the big-picture issues affecting sustainable design at building, community and national levels and will ask ‘Can the use of BIM affect a cultural change encouraging really effective collaboration and information exchange from the outset for both the construction and ongoing facilities management process while protecting the aesthetic elements of the project at all levels of decision making?’

Ecobuild is the world’s biggest event dedicated to sustainable design, construction and the built environment. Now in its 9th year, Ecobuild 2013 brings together communities from across diverse sectors to learn, share, innovate, experience and discover the future of sustainable building and construction.

He will talk about his own experience and the general role of the architect in transforming cityscapes – marrying technology, aesthetics and a concern for the environment.  Presentations will be rounded off by a discussion between participants and Q & A with the audience.

The event will be held on Monday 4th March 2013 at the Jarvis Suite at the RIBA.

Video of the debate is now online – click here to watch.

The lecture series aims to introduce final year undergraduates of architecture to practicing architects, designers, artists and engineers, who have recently completed inspiring architecture and can reveal particular insights into the beautiful complexity found in taking their ideas into the built form.

The society aims to provide a range of exciting and educational lectures, open to both students and members of the public.

The Academy has achieved a BREEAM rating of Excellent.

The Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) is an environmental assessment method for rating and certifying the performance of new homes based on BRE Global’s EcoHomes scheme. It is a Government owned national standard intended to encourage continuous improvement in sustainable home building.  Click here for more information.

Martin Doyle, Head Teacher at Riverside School commented “There is no comparison to our previous building. This place is spacious, easy to use. It’s amazing. The whole design is entirely fit for purpose and wholly user-friendly. We really are very, very impressed.”

The 120 place school is part of the Woodside Inclusive Learning Campus which also accommodates 1,080 mainstream pupils in Woodside High School, and realises the schools’ and borough’s vision for inclusive, adaptable and vibrant learning environments.

The planning committee praised the “excellent design”, citing it as “purposeful, practical and sitting well on the site”.

The development rationalises the current school site to create a new 3-storey school with more play area than it currently enjoys in addition to land sales on 3 residential and mixed use plots that part fund the school redevelopment.

The scheme uses perimeter blocks to restore the urban grain. The collective and community functions of the school are brought to the street frontage, bringing a new civic presence to the school. The learning clusters are set back in the site, looking onto newly landscaped play areas for the lower and upper school. A cross laminated timber structure characterises the interiors.

The scheme provides a mix of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom flats across the 3 new street blocks of 6, 5 and 3 storeys. All units have private amenity space in the form of courtyard gardens or inset balconies and meet the Code for Sustainable Homes level 4 and 5.

The scheme uses a simple primary palatte of brick with perforated brick balcony fronts and metal inset cladding to the housing and coloured high pressure laminate cladding to the school.

The phased scheme is due to start on site in January 2013.

Speakers from Oxford Brookes University, Loughborough University and Ravensbourne College share and discuss what they wished they had known when they embarked on workplace change in their institutions. Ian Goodfellow of Penoyre & Prasad and Fiona Duggan of FiD will respond with tried and tested guidelines for projects involving academic workspace.

The HEDQF aims to improve the performance of buildings and estates in universities and higher education colleges and provides a long-term forum for discussions between procurers in the higher education sector and the architectural profession.

For further information, click here.

When complete, the development will be carbon-negative in-use and is set to be the first BREEAM Outstanding school.

Key sustainability features include:

• Existing derelict site turned into an exemplary community park combining new buildings, refurbished facilities and landscape and ecological improvements, all linked together by a heat and power network;
• Excess heat is exported off-site to adjoining apartment buildings to achieve a carbon-negative in-use development;
• Recreational land use is maximised for the benefit of the greater community while accommodating educational needs of the school and youth centre;
• Extensive consultation with all stakeholders in the project – school, nursery, youth centre, local community and residents, as well as wildlife groups, police, and other interest groups;
• Use of innovative technologies such as Ecoplay greywater recycling and ‘e-stack’ ventilation system in primary school;
• New build designed for future proofing against climate change through use of construction materials, ventilation strategy and controls;
• Contractor committed to minimising waste during construction, with maximum 5% only going to landfill.

New London Awards, Servicing: Commendation, Crouch Hill Community Park.

This project is featured as a case study on the RIBA Sustainability Hub‘s website.

Transformational changes have been made to this 1990s Dockland house to bring about highly efficient energy use and an improved quality of living for the residents, whilst minimising visual impact on the neighbourhood.

The completed project is currently undergoing a 2-year period of energy and environmental monitoring. The predicted CO₂ emissions after retrofit are 16kg/m²/yr – a reduction of 79% from the 1990 baseline for average UK social housing.

Without extending the house, the internal environment has been transformed by the creation of a ventilating lightwell within the existing loft space to provide fresh air, daylight, amenity space and a clothes drying area. Accessible temperate storage is provided in the residual loft.

Innovations include:

• Triple-glazed windows with ventilating panels and louvers for secure day and night ventilation;
• A new product developed by Penoyre & Prasad and the window manufacturer;
• A ‘breathing’ roof to dissipate moisture, using natural insulation products (wood fibre slab and hemp quilt) with an intelligent vapour control membrane;
• Vacuum insulation panels in the floor for high thermal performance with minimal (25mm) rise in floor level.

In 2011 the project won a Three Rs, Housing ‘Small’ Award.

As well as optimising energy efficiency and lowering running costs, the reclad will give this iconic building a distinct new profile befitting the national significance of the NHS and will symbolise a resurgent London neighbourhood.

The brief asked for innovative quality, cost effective solutions to address the structural, fenestration and energy issues of the tower, restore it to its former glory and make it fit for purpose for the next 30 years. The transformed envelope alone will reduce energy use by 15-20%.

Thanks to the generosity of 15 separate sponsors, Exmouth Market was transformed by the temporary planting of 30 pear trees into a pedestrianised green route within the Festival’s Clerkenwell hub.

22,000 maple seeds were handed out to 2,000 festival visitors to continue the planting momentum and following the event, each and every tree was redistributed by Trees for Cities via community planting projects across London, enhancing some of the capital’s bleaker areas and making a direct contribution to a greener city. The entire event was recyclable including the cardboard planters and seats which were given to local primary schools for various projects.

‘The Non-Stop Forest worked so wonderfully at very different levels. It illustrated how urban spaces can, with a bit of imagination, so easily be transformed for the better. The arrival of the trees and their seats added hugely to the experience of Exmouth Market – people sat there for hours reading the Sunday papers, enjoying a coffee and the fine weather.

At the wider end of the spectrum it contributes to the momentum for a greener city. Sponsoring a tree in the city – like sponsoring a brick for a building or a seat in a theatre – is a nice concept; it means many people and organisations can contribute and there is a long lasting physical reminder of their generosity. In promoting such positive improvement in the quality of life in the city, the Non-Stop Forest is precisely the sort of project that the Festival hopes to encourage.’

Peter Murray, Festival Director, London Festival of Architecture

The £4.16m project has been developed in response to Richmond and Twickenham PCT’s urgent need for additional healthcare services including 2 GP practices, mental health and community based health and social care, along with services such as dentistry, podiatry and baby clinics. The entire top floor is dedicated to a hub for outreach social care services.

The design has achieved a BREEAM healthcare rating of Excellent.