SOUTHSIDE HEREFORD: UNIVERSITY DESIGN CHALLENGE

Preparing the next generation of net zero professionals.

The Challenge

CONNECT A LOCAL COMMUNITY
Reimagine how a community centre can connect people in Southside Hereford and apply your knowledge to solving a real world problem.
TAKE ON A GLOBAL CHALLENGE
Create detailed designs which are ‘net zero’, employ sustainable building materials and construction methods, are energy and resource efficient.
WORK IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMS
Connect with your peers and future colleagues from across the built environmental sector by working as you would in your professional life.
GAIN SKILLS WHICH EMPLOYERS VALUE
Our graduates go on to get jobs in leading built environment firms at the cutting edge of building a new-low carbon world.
WORK WITH LOW CARBON MATERIALS
Wood is crucial to building a low-carbon future, and we need a new generation of UK professionals with the knowledge to use it wisely and well.

TIMELINE: DEC 2021 – JUL 2022

Challenge Launch

We launch at the end of December 2021 with our partners Edinburgh Napier University and NMITE, and begin our mission to equip a new generation of professionals with the skills to take on climate change.

Webinar series

More than 60 built environment professionals come together across 18 webinars between January and March 2022 to upskill the next generation on how to build low carbon.

Teams formed

More than 150 students come together to form interdisciplinary teams from a wide range of built environment courses from 57 Universities and Further Educations Colleges found right across the UK.

Online Sessions

Students work together as interdisciplinary teams from March to June 2022 to meet the project brief, meeting in person and online with the support of Timber Development UK to complete their submission.

Winners Ceremony

The winners of the Timber Development UK University Design Challenge (#TDChallenge22) are announced in an in-person ceremony at NMITE’s Skylon Campus in Hereford on July 2022.

The Brief

This challenge was open to multidisciplinary teams of between 4-8 who are studying a Built Environment course at a UK university or who graduated in 2021. Both individual participants or others could form or create and join a team.

“Hereford aspires to be one of the greenest and fairest cities in the country, with fantastic opportunities and quality of life for people of all ages. Deeply rooted in our unique rural heritage, we’re blossoming into a richly creative, digital, connected and highly-skilled place to live, work study, invest and visit.”

The stakeholders, your clients in this competition, will set out their requirements and needs for Southside Hereford which is to be a physical building to provide a vibrant, inspiring and inclusive sports, food and skills community focal point for the people of South Wye.

Participating teams must produce designs that sites the community centre within the local context and landscape, integrating the client’s and community’s interests.

The detailed designs must be ‘net zero’, creatively employing sustainable building materials and construction methods, and be energy and resource efficient, focusing on the health and well-being of people, the community, and our planet. Designed for longevity, adaptability, circularity and a warming climate and producing more energy than it requires, MMC and DfMA should be explored.

The main material focus and specification for the centre will be timber and timber hybrid systems. Your team’s detailed design for the building will meet the Passivhaus Standard and exceed the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge targets.

In Numbers

150

Students

57

Universities

6

Months

View the Webinars

The shortlist

Team 1

A vibrant space

‘Our design creates a welcoming and vibrant space which balances the requirements of all three clients.

‘The central airy space, covered by a barn-inspired timber, provides a space for three different communities to come together.

‘The principle of sustainable design has been incorporated throughout the design through standardised SIP panels, which will provide a warm cosy environment for football players and students alike.

‘The design has considered modern methods of construction and the prefabrication of the wall and roof elements to enable quick and rapid construction.’

Team 4

Responsible Design

The building is designed with a holistic perspective on sustainability, it will educate and raise awareness, to nurture the next generation of climate conscious environmentally responsible people.

It will nurture and grow a model community of the future, targeting Hereford where it needs it the most. Connecting people with their local food, grown by locals in an educational garden. New users come to experience the spaces and are encouraged to stay and engage with sustainability. The cook school has tall windows in the structural bay overlooking growing allotments with access to pick vegetables.

The building runs on minimal energy, and aims to produces it for the grid, working with the elements like a biological organism‘s cell. The sunspace becomes the open social market café shop and initial welcoming space of the building as users walk up using the public footpath. It prevents overheating and summer cooling demands, as plants, harness excess radiation.

Full height sun space provides daylight, making the glass envelope advantageous and an active frontage. Moveable sliding shutters can shade and open the spaces up onto the outdoor deck to catalyse social synergy, unravel the activities of the organisations housed within to the wider community and allow intergenerational gathering. Foliage and landscaping, dissolves the harsh building edge, blending it into landscape and reducing its visual impact.

Team 7

Wye not wood?

Gathering carbon, culture, and community, the new Hereford Hub will become a catalyst for local-level empowerment and ecological generation.

The timber architecture nestles gently into a scenic greenfield – using natural climatic patterns and low-cost methods to generate solar electricity, utilising rainwater, and recovering heat for the internal environment.

Fresh links are provided between residents and local experts, offering educational services in sustainable construction, circular food economies, and outdoor play.

The connectiveness established between clients and stakeholders will resonate in progress that will be made in building a green future for Hereford and beyond.

Team 8

Solar gain

Our design comprises of a U-shaped structure that encloses a courtyard. This form allows for maximum solar gain while also creating a social hub at its center, where all three users can interact.

The building sits in front of the existing hedge line, instead of replacing it, to retain its rich vegetation and minimize our impact. To accommodate the diverse functions of the brief and the variety in privacy demands, we created multiple entrances with the public and private spaces having their own, separate orientations.

Lastly, the social moments in the building occur both internally in the allocated spaces but also more organically in the central courtyard.

Team 10

Holistic southside

Identifying the three communities and designing for each distinct usage was integral in creating a holistic southside centre.

Through a fabric first approach and timber-based design, Team 10 proposes a sustainable, non-disruptive, and user centric space. Paired with complementary clusters of landscape design, each user profile experiences a tailored entrance sequence.

Our holistic centre provides appropriate social cohesion with consideration for smaller age groups from cooking workshops. By following exemplary LEED/BREEAM standards, meeting RIBA/LETI requirements were naturally met. An iterative process was essential throughout the design phase to minimize embodied carbon while ensuring sensible costing and MMCs.

Team 18

Southern Facade

Isolated on the boarder of the Herefordshire countryside. A place for people to escape the city, refresh, socialise and learn new skills.

The elongated southern façade maximises natural light and green vista, whilst minimising our impact both visually and environmentally. The rooms, positioned with care to allow for movement and collision spaces but, where needed, seclusion and privacy.

This space is for Hereford; for different user groups coming together to form one community.The design philosophy was future proofing – minimal internal structures for future arrangement, easily extendable out of the east and west walls, and, le pièce de résistance, a fully loadable roof space ripe for the utilisation.