The Norwich University of the Arts (NUA) Society for Architecture and Interior Design (SAID) organised a student competition in collaboration with the Norfolk Association of Architects (NAA) in Autumn 2020 as part of the RIBA’s ‘People, Place, Planet’ series of talks and events. The NAA presented a number of lectures around the topic of sustainable materials and as part of this, the idea grew for the student competition.
The competition’s brief was to design an external structure for use by independent cafes and restaurants within Norwich city centre to provide alternative seating spaces for those places without the space to cater for customers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The focus of the competition was a sustainable shelter considering embodied carbon, re-use of the structure and materials within it, adaptability and versatility amongst others.
We received some fantastic submissions and shortlisted three of the entries. All three had met the brief very well with innovative and original ideas for the shelters, so choosing a winner was difficult but the judges managed to agree on a winner, saying of the winning design, “The submission has a good balance between practicality, creativity and innovation.”
So the winner of the 2020 NAA/NUA SAID Sustainability Autumn Competition is……(drum roll please!)…… ELIZABETH BARRELL!
Congratulations to Elizabeth and thank you for all the submissions. The judges have prepared a video announcing the winner and providing some feedback on all three shortlisted submissions:
The NAA and NUA SAID would also like to thank our judges for undertaking the difficult task of picking a winner. We are very grateful for you input and for the feedback on the submissions, which is invaluable for the students.
Our judges were –
Chris Murch, architect from NPS in Norwich;
Fraser Hall, architect and partner at Brown & Co in Norwich;
Jenny Harvey, architect and director at Ensemble in Norfolk;
Jonathan Mawer, architect at Lucas + Western Architects in Wymondham
Lee Burgess, architect and director at XL Werks in Norwich.
Well done to all the students who entered the competition and we look forward to more collaborations with NUA and SAID in the future!