The new home of Essex Business School has won the Design through Innovation category at the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) Awards 2016 for the East of England.

The awards aim to showcase the most inspirational initiatives and developments in the UK with the regional award winners announced on 11 May at a special ceremony hosted by The Apex in Bury St Edmunds. Each category winner will now go forward to the national final.

The award comes just a month after the stunning Silberrad Student Centre and library extension won the RIBA East Building of the Year Award.

The judges said: "The building is low-carbon as part of the school’s ethos to lead the development of sustainable business strategies and provides flexible group learning and media facilities with an emphasis on postgraduate learning and research. The site is an important link between the existing 1960s campus and the university’s new Knowledge Gateway research park. It is surrounded by mature trees relating to the original parkland, which integrates well with the building and landscape design."

The designs for the new building were created by BDP to reflect Essex Business School’s ethos of sustainability in educating the business leaders of tomorrow and the construction project was overseen by Morgan Sindall.

A stunning winter garden with Eden Project-like domed roof is at the heart of the site creating its own micro-climate. More than one tonne of carbon is saved per day through the building’s energy efficient design and the use of low carbon technologies.

State-of-the-art facilities include a virtual Bloomberg trading floor and innovation booths for group-working plus dedicated working space for postgraduate and research students.

Essex Business School is one of the top 25 business schools in the country for the quality of its research, with two-thirds of its research rated as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. More than 1,700 students are studying at the Business School from more than 130 countries – including around 300 postgraduates.

The new building is a flagship building on the Knowledge Gateway which is being developed to become the location of choice in the eastern region for knowledge-based enterprises in science, technology and the creative sector.

Parkside Office Village, just across from the new building, is already providing a home to close to 20 businesses with new phases under development due to the level of demand. At the same time a £10 million Innovation Centre, accommodating up to 52 new start-ups companies, has also just received planning approval.

Links

• RICS Awards Announcement
• East Anglian Daily Times reports on opening of Essex Business School