Buildings

Winner: Willmott Dixon – The Pears Building, Immunity & Transplantation Research Facility The Pears Building provides a new home for the UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation (IIT), allowing researchers to collaborate with clinicians at the neighbouring Royal Free Hospital. Willmott Dixon’s client for the design-and-build contract, the Royal Free…

Winner: Willmott Dixon – Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building, University of Warwick The University of Warwick’s new Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building (IBRB) is a six-storey, 7,000 square-metre facility for up to 300 biomedical researchers. It comprises five floors of labs, plus social and collaborative spaces and a 400-seat lecture theatre. It…

Winner: Kier – HMP Five Wells The £253m HMP Five Wells project will deliver 1,680 new prison places, as part of the Ministry of Justice’s aim to modernise the prison estate, to make it more efficient, safer and better focused on rehabilitation. A core goal is to optimise design, procurement,…

Winner: TopHat – Low Carbon Homes TopHat said its White Road project for Medway Council represented a showcase of what can be delivered using offsite construction, with the project’s 20 homes accounting for less embodied carbon than one traditionally built home. Once occupied, each of the houses should deliver a…

Progress on protecting buildings from the impact of climate change is behind where it should be, and the need is only becoming more urgent. Greg Pitcher reports

James Bruce is a director at engineering consultancy Civic Engineers The joy of working on retrofit construction projects is that, more often than not, the buildings will throw up some unexpected surprises. Brownsfield Mill in Manchester provides a great example. This 1825 Grade II-listed brick Victorian cotton mill was the…

Rico Wojtulewicz is head of housing and planning policy at trade body the National Federation of Builders The start of August saw a change to Permitted Development Rights (PDR) in England that will allow many more commercial buildings – such as gyms, shops and cafes – to be converted into…

Richard Baldwin is director of development at Derwent London How do we ‘build back better’? Or, in the case of construction, just ‘build better’? This issue has exercised the industry for years, not just since the pandemic. The challenges of ensuring sustainability, flexibility, and futureproofing all come into sharp focus,…

In 2004, John Sisk & Son embarked on its first scheme at Wembley Park for client Quintain. Now, after completing 10 projects worth more than £813m in value, Sisk has successfully delivered over 2,000 homes for the community at the dynamic 85-acre regeneration scheme. There are 1,200 apartments within two…

Mike Smith is technical director at the Electrical Contractors' Association (ECA) In 2017, the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower took 72 lives and exposed serious failings in the national approach to building and managing high-rise homes. Since the tragedy, ECA and FSA (the ECA’s specialist Fire & Security Association group)…