TRADA is taking a lead in engaging with universities and working with its professional and supplier members to run a competition that encourages holistic team working and a knowledgeable understanding of using timber and timber products when designing, specifying and costing buildings.
The TRADA University Challenge is a high-pressure charrette-styled competition, which invites architects, architectural technologists, engineers, landscape architects and quantity surveying undergraduates from UK universities to participate. This year the brief was to design “healthy” student accommodation predominantly from timber and the intense two-day challenge took place on February 8-9 at the University of Sheffield’s Diamond building.
Sixty students from 25 universities split into 10 teams of six, competing to see who could design, cost and engineer accommodation that used timber and timber products to emphasise health and well-being, energy efficiency, and building to budget. An existing site in the heart of Sheffield’s shopping district grounded and gave real life constraints to the project brief.
Each team included two architects or architectural technologists, two engineers, a landscape architect and a quantity surveyor, none of whom had met before – creating situations and relationships comparable to real world project teams. This aspect opens up clear divides, with each discipline fighting for prominence, before boundary lines are broken and ideas coalesce into one design. Knowing then what they need to bring to the project, the team members work together, enjoying the constraints and interaction that team working brings.
Throughout the two days teams had open access to the judging panel of pioneering design professionals and knowledgeable industry sponsors, and the University of Sheffield’s exceptional facilities.
The multidisciplinary team of six that aced this year’s competition ignored the convention of the red line boundary and changed the arrangement of buildings around the site. Their innovative approach led to a design that combined post and beam with a modular volumetric structure. Slotted and stacked into four frames of differing heights, which maximised sunlight, the ‘CLT room pods insulated with wood-fibre’ are accessed through the communal central areas, adding to student community engagement. Each studio room included a shower room and a study area with external windowed views. Communal areas at both roof and ground level encourage further interaction. Total costs were estimated at £33m with an 18-month programme. Team 9 scooped the top prize of £1,200, closely followed by Team 3 in second place and Teams 4 and 7 in third and fourth respectively. Quantity surveyor student Andy Freeman (Team 6) from Sheffield Hallam University was highly commended.
Team 9 comprised engineers Arnas Mikalauskas, University of Sheffield and Aleksandra Ziembinska, University of Strathclyde: architect/interior architects Isaac Palmiere-Szabo, Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University and Louisa Keighley, University of Derby; landscape architect Emma Beaumont, University of Sheffield; and quantity surveyor Cameron Timms, Coventry University.
“[Working with engineers] was very new and really enlightening,” said Louisa Keighley. “It was quite daunting to discover how much information they needed. I’ve never worked with a QS to that level before either and it was really interesting to see how they worked. I think the knowledge gained in the TRADA University Challenge will be invaluable when I go out into the workplace. I’ll know what is required of me and what information others will need from me.”
The competition was sponsored by the TTF, Steico and Stora Enso and supported by Wood for Good and PEFC UK.
