Passivhaus Student Competition Winners

The Passivhaus Student Competition, sponsored by Tarmac, aims to empower the next generation of architects and engineers to adopt the Passivhaus Standard, the fastest growing energy standard in the world. With topics such as energy efficiency, eliminating the performance gap and occupant health & wellbeing all rising on the UK construction agenda, the competition equips students with Passivhaus knowledge and offers an opportunity to implement Passivhaus methodology on their proposals, allowing them to address these factors at the start of the design process rather than as sustainable bolt-on.

The competition is incorporated into participating Universities’ existing teaching schedule, embedding Passivhaus principles early into the design brief.

The Passivhaus Student Competition is a highly effective way for students to deepen their understanding of the nuances of key passive design concepts such as orientation, building form, daylight, and shading and get to grips with how these issues directly impact a building’s environmental performance.

Hattie Hartman, Sustainability Editor, Architect's Journal

Following on from the inaugural competition, the nationwide event has grown to 5 Universities and over 100 participating students. Competitors were encouraged to consider how their architectural design choices effect their building’s energy & environmental performance. Students were visited by external Passivhaus tutors, provided with Passivhaus software and had the opportunity to attend site visits to leading edge large-scale Passivhaus schemes such as the largest commercial Passivhaus in the UK, Leicester Centre for Medicine, and the 400+ homes estate regeneration currently under construction at Agar Grove in London.

The Trust has been delighted to continue our collaboration with Tarmac on the Passivhaus Student Competition. We share the importance of educating future architects and engineers on the impact they can make by creating resilient communities and sustainable places via the built environment. Tarmac’s involvement has been key in facilitating the resources the competition provided and enabling students to taste some of the real-world skills required in practice

Jon Bootland, CEO, Passivhaus Trust

Winners

The judges have deliberated, and a winners are:


WINNER: Bashar, Mohd, Sharon Creative College Bristol proposes an environmentally conscious educational building with straw bale & hempcrete. Full shortlist: Lefebvre I Wang I Vernekar Needham I Sewell I Horne	Joint WINNER: Andres Guamani Carbon Neutral Residential Development in Nottingham explored comparisons of design choices on building performance. Shortlist: Maria Fernanda Barranco	Joint WINNER: Nuansa Kusumastuti Heart Valley Housing aims to regenerate deprived Bestwood with simple Passivhaus forms & external shading. Shortlist: Maria Fernanda Barranco


WINNER: Vladislav Artyukhov Tracks of Barcelona showcased good consideration of shading on a floating housing concept. Shortlist: Jose Angel Delgado Marija Milosevic	WINNER: Karl Higham A Passivhaus hostel on a Zurich mountain displayed good analysis of the local topography & climate. Shortlist: Julio Jimenezt Mohammed Elsayed Longlist: Zijun Peng Juntong Hu Aurora Pelayo, Karl Higham, Julio Jimenez	WINNER: James Hellman Healthy homes in Chepstow embraced nature, bringing the outdoors in, & a good ventilation strategy. Shortlist: Joe Hyatt Zineb Saadi El Hassani

As a building science educator, it was excellent to see the results of the competition demonstrating student engagement with the Passivhaus design principles. The student competition is an excellent vehicle for supporting the education of the next generation of architects with a robust energy efficiency design standard.

Dr Mark Gillott, University of Nottingham

Congratulations to the winners, who are invited to the UK Passivhaus Conference, held in London later in October, for the official prize giving ceremony.

Winner from Oxford Brookes, Vladislav Artyukhov, designed a Barcelona floating house in response to a forecast of rising sea levels and hotter climate. He says “The climate shapes our built environment, influences our lifestyle, and impacts on our behaviour and habits. Buildings in this context are the element of comfort and quality of life, and their purpose is to provide these qualities regardless of specific weather conditions. It is the task of architects and designers, therefore, to make buildings perform for health and well-being of habitants along with making them more environmentally friendly, consuming less natural resources and producing less pollution. I think it is important to take responsibility for the clean future of our cities and master a set of skills capacitating the sustainable and energy efficient design. Implementing Passivhaus principles into designs is a good way of achieving this.”

The Trust and Tarmac would like to thank all external tutors and supporters of the competition.

I got involved with the Passivhaus Student Competition because the issues that make Passivhaus successful need to be considered early in the design process, the earlier the better, and that means making sure Architects understand the principles.

What better way to achieve this than by taking it into our schools of Architecture. Too often, Passivhaus is treated as a ‘bolt-on’, too late in the day to exploit the principles and resulting in difficult or expensive solutions. The idea of including it within a general project for the students and entering that into a competition specifically looking at the Passivhaus principles and solutions makes the need to understand and incorporate energy efficient design very real for the students and introduces another constraint or opportunity into the general design approach.

Chris Parsons, Parsons + Whittley