On the lookout for tomorrow's timber talent
On 8-9 February, 60 UK students will gather in Sheffield for a charrette-style challenge to design healthy student accommodation predominantly from timber.
The TRADA University Challenge brings 60 students from multiple disciplines and universities together at the University of Sheffield’s Diamond Building, separates them into ten teams of six, and then challenges them to design a building predominantly from timber. The 2019 challenge invites students to design exemplary student accommodation, with an emphasis on health and well-being, energy efficiency, and building to budget.
This year students will be asked to design to a tight brief, incorporating sponsors’ products while working around real life constraints provided by the existing site chosen for this challenge: an old shopping centre in the heart of Sheffield’s shopping district. As an additional challenge, and to emulate real life experience, students of quantity surveying have been added to each team this year – stressing the importance of building to budget. Each team will include two Architectural Technologists or architects, two engineers, a landscape architect and a quantity surveyor – creating situations and relationships comparable to project teams – with pioneering design professionals and industry members providing specialist support.
Timber is growing more popular amongst developers of student accommodation due to the savings that can be made on time and cost. However, the inherent benefits of timber and its potential role in supporting health and well-being also warrants highlighting; there is a mounting awareness of the mental health crisis students across the UK are currently facing – and when research indicates that the average person spends more than 90% of their time indoors, never has the influence of our environment on our mindset been so important to utilise.
Tabitha Binding, TRADA’s University Engagement Manager, shared: ‘Our University Challenge is all about putting multidisciplinary teams, where students have not met prior, up against a strict deadline – and watching them flourish while working together within a practical context. We want to help students gain confidence in how to design, specify, cost and build with timber and timber products’.
‘Watching last year’s challenge, Urban Buzz 2018, unfold was an inspiration,’ Tabitha continued, ‘I can’t wait to meet this year’s cohort, amongst whom I have no doubt we’ll find some more of tomorrow’s timber talent’.
Universities involved include Bath, Bournemouth, Bristol, Canterbury, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh Napier, Herts, Leicester DMU, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham Trent, Reading, Salford, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam, Strathclyde, Trinity St David, UEL, USW, and UWE.
For more information, please contact [email protected].