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Waste House

Brighton and Hove

Project Details

£100,000 to £249,999

New Build

Practice

BakerBrown Studio Limited

Cooksbridge Station House , Cooksbridge , LEWES , East Sussex , BN8 4SW , United Kingdom

The brief for this project was to design and construct a permanent academic building that was also an open studio for use by local community groups, businesses, schools & colleges. The ambition was also to construct the building using material discarded by others and crucially to do this including students and other young people in the design and build process; to use these processes as a ‘live’ pedagogic tool. The Brighton Waste House as it became known was opened in June 2014 and continues to be a ‘live’ on-going research project and permanent new design workshop (it is not a dwelling) focused on enabling open discussion and understanding of sustainable development. It is situated on campus at The University of Brighton’s College for Arts & Humanities at Grand Parade. Designed by Senior Lecturer & Architect Duncan Baker-Brown, together with undergraduate architecture & interior architecture students, this project was built by apprentices from The Mears Group, students from City College Brighton & Hove and The Faculty of Arts as well as volunteers. In all over 350 students helped with the project. The Brighton Waste House is the first permanent ‘carbon negative’ public building in Europe to be constructed from approximately 90% waste, surplus material & discarded plastic gathered from the construction and other industries, as well as our homes. It has Full Planning & Building Regulations Approvals. It tries to prove “that there is no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place!” The project continues a line of research by BakerBrown considering truly sustainable sources of materials and construction systems, or to be more precise truly ‘circular metabolisms’ that will one day help create a ‘Circular Economy’. Baker-Brown’s experience on this project has enabled him to write a book ‘The Re-Use Atlas: A designers guide towards a Circular Economy’. AWARDS: 1. 2015 RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize Special Prize winner 2. 2015 RIBA South East Regional Award winner 3. 2015 RIBA South East Regional Sustainability Award winner 4. 2015 Winner International Green Apple Awards for the Built Environment 5. 2014 Highly Commended in Blueprint Awards Best Sustainable Project 6. 2014 Winner of People Environment & Achievement (PEA) Award ‘Best Eco Project Working with Schools’ 7. 2014 Winner in 2degrees Champions Awards for Waste & Resource Management and Building or Property Project of the year 8. 2014 Finalist in Climate Week Awards