UNIVERSITY students across the UK will reimagine an English town as part of a national competition launched this week.
The Southside Hereford: University Design challenge will ask built environment learners to create a ‘net-zero community centre’ based on timber and timber-hybrid systems in the Herefordshire city.
Run in partnership by Timber Development UK, New Model Institute of Technology and Engineering (NMITE), Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) and the Passivhaus Trust, the 2022 task is to design an exemplary community building that produces more energy than it consumes.
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Tabitha Binding, Timber Development UK, university engagement programme manager, said: “Built environment professionals must prepare for a net zero future, and this must start in the classroom if we are to reach our climate goals. Our curriculum must be strengthened to meet the climate challenge by raising climate literacy.
“For our future architects, engineers, cost consultants, and landscape architects, this means improving their knowledge and capability of working with low-carbon materials such as timber – and being able to use it wisely and well.
“They also need to be able to work efficiently and effectively together. Interdisciplinary design and delivery teams can achieve far more than individual professions working separately on the same project. Where better to learn these skills than at university?”
Teams must produce designs that sites the community centre within the local context and landscape integrating the clients’ and communities’ interests.
The detailed designs must be ‘net zero’, creatively employing sustainable building materials and construction methods, and be energy and resource efficient, focusing on the health and well-being of people, the community, and our planet.
Kirsty Connell-Skinner, sustainable construction partnerships manager, Edinburgh Napier University, said: “This competition illustrates Edinburgh Napier’s innovative approach to timber engineering education – an exciting real-life challenge for built environment students and recent graduates to design and build for a net zero future.
"Bringing groups together for this challenge will help to make ideas and innovation come to life. This is the sweet spot where we can unlock the potential to help meet sustainability ambitions in the construction industry.
“With support from the HCI Skills Gateway and Ufi VocTech Trust, the 2022 competition will see our experiential learning in Timber Technology Engineering & Design adopted across the UK. We can’t wait to see the positive impact this competition will have for Hereford Southside and the world.”
You can sign up to participate in the challenge now on the TRADA website [link]
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