LondonMet Team received 'Highly Commended'
10th March 2009
A London Metropolitan University team has been highly commended in industry leading publication, The Architect’s Journal (AJ), in its 2009 Small Project’s Award ceremonies.
The team, from the postgraduate research group, Unit 7, headed by David Grandorge and Peter Karl Becher had designed A Timber Room in Somerset for the 2008 Ecobuild exhibition at Earl’s Court, London where it received a lot of positive feedback.
A Timber Room in Somerset was constructed from composite timber elements donated by Finnforest, a UK based sustainable, wood products company. German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg and artist Hilary Koob-Sassen invited the students to rebuild the existing structure in Somerset as part of their degree.
The 2008-9 Unit 7 research programme focused on: ‘a more speculative and radical position in relation to architecture’s dependency on diminishing resources.’ Students were encouraged to imagine a less oil-dependent future where materials such as timber and other recycled materials are brought to the fore as building materials in a re-imagined urban landscape.
The original Timber Room was transported from Somerset by lorry, reassembled and added to, creating a visually and thermally warm space inside an existing agricultural shed. The total cost of the project was £9,500.
The AJ Small Projects Awards sponsored by engineering firm, Rambøll Whitbybird, rewards unpublished schemes with a contract value of less than £250,000.
Rambøll Whitbybird's Simon Smith, who judged the competition, told the AJ: 'These awards give us a fantastic opportunity to support the size of projects from where we grew as a firm.
'It always produces a lovely selection of up-and-coming practices and gives a great insight into what the industry will become in years to come.'