Posted On January 24, 2019
On the lookout for tomorrow's timber talent
TRADA University Challenge 2019
On 8-9th February 60 UK students will gather in Sheffield for a charrette-style challenge to design healthy student accommodation predominantly from timber.
G&T Partner, Oliver Booth, is supporting the TRADA University Challenge and will form part of the judging panel across the two days. The 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 to stress the importance of building to budget. Each team will include two architects or architectural technologists, 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.
"We want to help students gain confidence in how to design, specify, cost and build with timber and timber products"Tabitha Binding, TRADA’s University Engagement Manager
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’.
"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"TABITHA BINDING, TRADA’S UNIVERSITY ENGAGEMENT MANAGER
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
- UWE
Confirmed judges include architects Alex Abbey of Cullinan Studio, Waugh Thistleton’s Kieran Walker and dRMM’s Patrick Usborne, engineers Tom Harley-Tuffs of Ramboll, AKT II’s Ricardo Candel and Arup’s Jaffel Versi, as well as quantity surveyor Oliver Booth of Gardiner & Theobald and landscape architect Stephanie Crewe of LUC.
For more information, please contact tbinding@trada.co.uk.