Gary Neville eco-house goes for planning

Make Architects has designed this ultra-sustainable home for England and Manchester United footballer Gary Neville.
Plans for the house, which have taken three years to perfect, have now been submitted to Bolton Council.
The
8,000 sq ft property will be built in the Pennines, and – subject to
approval – would become the first carbon neutral home in the north
west, according to the practice.
The four bedroom house is
designed with a kitchen at its heart, and several wings – with titles
like “eat”, “relax”, “entertain”, “work”, “sleep” and “play” - spanning
off it like the petals of a flower.
It is to be built on a single
level, and has been likened to the Skara Brae Neolithic settlement in
Orkney, because of the way it is built into the hillside.
Neville, 34, plans to build the property on the site of an entire
18th century farming hamlet which he bought for himself and his wife,
Emma four years ago. The couple have already built a 12-bedroom family home on the site, known locally as Top O’ Th’ Knotts.
A
wind turbine will provide power for the property itself and a
neighbouring house, while covering much of the house in a green roof of
meadow grasses and wildflowers will reduce energy usage. The
property, which also features solar panels and a ground source heat
pump, is on green belt land but it is understood that the team hopes
that it will be allowed to go ahead because it falls into the category
of being “truly outstanding and ground breaking”.
The scheme has
already been selected as an exemplar project within the government’s
‘Planning Performance Agreements for Renewable and Low Carbon Energy
Schemes’ programme. If planning permission be granted, preliminary construction work is expected to start later this year.
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Network Rail has go-ahead for Milton Keynes HQ

GMW’s plans for a national centre for Network Rail have been given planning approval.
The firm has created a new, consolidated base for some 3,000 employees currently based in regional centres across the UK. The
37,000sq m scheme was approved by Milton Keynes Council last week and
will now be built on the site of the former National Hockey Stadium. The
building includes a living roof and rainwater harvesting system. There
are also recharging points for electric vehicles and an allotment on
site to grow fruit and vegetables.
Network Rail is aiming to achieve a Breeam Excellent rating for the centre. The
National Hockey Stadium was built by English Partnerships and was used
by England Hockey from 1995 to 2003, until it was declared unviable. It
was used briefly by the Milton Keynes Dons football club but has been
empty since 2007. Work is due to start on site in late summer, and be completed by 2012.
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Sheppard Robson to design Trafford grammar school
Sheppard Robson has won a contract to design a £20 million Roman Catholic boys’ grammar school in Trafford.
Designs
for the rebuilt St Ambrose Voluntary Aided College in Hale Barns will
reflect the college’s religious ethos, according to the practice, with
space at its centre representing the ‘heart of the community’ including
chapel, dining, social and assembly areas. The central space
will be visible from all points and will provide access to all teaching
areas, dispensing with the need for internal corridors.
Cantilevering platforms on the upper levels will boast staff areas, library and ICT facilities. St Ambrose will also feature a sports hall suspended over a new swimming pool. The building is expected to be submitted for planning permission in May 2010, with completion in 2011.
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Fat designs Cardiff TV centre for Dr Who
Fat has drawn up plans for a new BBC TV production centre in Wales featuring a decorative 300m-long facade
The
building, which will host filming of flagship BBC shows including
Doctor Who and Casualty, will be the centre-piece and first phase of a
vast regeneration scheme at the Roath Basin site in Cardiff Bay. The
building’s length reflects the adjacent pitched-roof dock buildings
with the north facade boasting a repeating wave motif described by the
firm as both gothic and space age.
“In line with the diverse
character of the surrounding architecture, the proposed building has a
unique char-acter of its own, which marks it out as an important
cultural building which at the same time responds to the dockside
architecture adjacent to it,” explains the design statement submitted
to Cardiff Council. As
well as the production centre — which also includes a green wall — the
application involves plans for a new bridge to be built across Roath
Basin.
It was designed by Studio Bednarski, and won a competition
launched by the Welsh Development Agency, beating shortlisted entries
by Grimshaw, Yee Associates and Murray Dunlop Architects. The
Roath Basin project, masterplanned by DEGW, includes 92,903sq m of
commercial development space and more than 1,000 new homes.
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New Veterinary College building wins planning
Architecture Plb has been granted planning permission for a new £6 million building for the Royal Veterinary College.
The
facility will act as a gateway to its rural campus, Hawkshead, near
Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, and work is due to start on site in March. It is hoped the project will be completed by the end of the year. The firm is now working on masterplans for the college’s two campuses, Hawkshead and Camden, north London.
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7N receive clearance for Inverness Airport Business Park


Inverness Airport has received clearance from Inverness, Nairn,
Badenoch and Strathspey planning committee to construct a new business
park.
A site covering 250 hectares will be developed by a consortium
comprising private and public sector organisations including Highland
Council and Moray Development Company Ltd. Over the long term a range of commercial, industrial, storage,
distribution and hotel facilities will erected on land adjacent to the
airport. These will be separated into a series of “zones” to take account of localised land uses such as woodland, airside and landscape.
Stressing good design the developers have employed 7N Architects to
compile a design code for architects on orientations, elevation and
materials. Extensive landscaping and the planting of some 150,000 trees
are also proposed. The scheme, which abuts the proposed New Town of Tornagrain, was
opposed by Croy and Culloden & Ardersier and Petty Community
Councils.
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Westminster approves Hogarth Architects’ private house
Westminster Council has approved Hogarth Architects’ plans for a £1 million new home in St John’s Wood.
Two
earlier planning applications were turned down with planners citing the
design and appearance of the front facade as reasons for refusal. The
approved design is for a 250sq m, two-bedroom house to replace an
existing single-storey artist’s studio. The size of the proposal could
not exceed the dimensions of the original building so an additional
floor will be built below ground level. The house will feature a green roof and a geo-thermal heat pump.
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Sanaa's Rolex centre set for opening
Sanaa's new Rolex Learning Centre at the
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland will
open at the end of February.
The centre is conceived as an integrated learning environment and includes both study and social spaces.
It
is designed as a single fluid space, with gentle slopes and terraces,
undulating around a series of internal ‘patios’, with hidden supports
for its complex curving roof that will create stunning architectural photography.
The Rolex Learning Center, as the new campus hub, illustrates the vision of the university where traditional boundaries
between faculties are broken down, where mathematicians and engineers
meet with neuroscientists and microtechnicians to envision new
technologies that improve lives, and where the public are inspired and
made welcome.
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Diller Scofidio & Renfro museum bubble

This 145ft bubble billowing out of the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on Washington’s National Mall is
from the desk of New York firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro. The
$5 million museum extension, made from translucent pale blue fabric,
would be inflated twice a year – in May and October – by two
refrigerator-size air pumps. The rest of the year it would be packed
away.
If approved, it would be erected in the museum’s internal courtyard and
swell out of the top and side, creating a luminous meeting hall and
public lounge inside Gordon Bunshaft’s 1974 Modernist drum often featured in architectural photography. It would be held down by steel cables and a water-filled ring at its
base and transparent areas would give visitors views over galleries and
out on to the Mall.
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Proctor & Matthews’ Chester Zoo biodome in for planning

Proctor & Matthews’ design for a £90 million rainforest biodome at Chester Zoo has been submitted for detailed planning.
The
Heart of Africa Biodome covers 16,000sq m and plans to recreate the
tropical habitats of the Congo. At 34m-high, it will be larger than the
Eden Project’s tropical house, a structure often featured in architectural photography. The design is topped with an undulating dome, which will be one of the largest ETFE-clad free-form roof structures in the world.
Scheduled
to open in 2014, the biodome will contain a jungle canopy with an
authentic climate and home to gorillas, chimpanzees, reptiles, insects
and other creatures. The project, a collaboration with Barton
Willmore, forms part of the Natural Vision redevelopment, a £225
million plan to turn the zoo into Europe’s largest conservation, animal
and leisure attraction over the next 15 years.
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K2's Liverpool eco-house goes for planning

K2 Architects has submitted plans for a new eco-house on Merseyside.
The Liverpool firm sent in its application to Sefton Borough Council last week and expects to get a decision this coming spring. The
200 sq m project at Formby, just north of Liverpool, will feature two
bedrooms, a green roof and a timber clad pod to the first floor.
It
has been called the ‘mace’ in honour of the site’s previous origins. It
is currently a dilapidated billiard and snooker hall and the mace is an
ancient form of snooker cue. The scheme is for a private client who lives next door to the current site.
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Green light for Hadid’s Michigan art museum

Zaha Hadid Architects’ art museum for Michigan State University has been given the go-ahead by the college’s trustees.
Work
will start on March 16 and the building is scheduled to open in 2012.
Hadid is expected to attend the ground-breaking ceremony.
She won an international design competition for the 4,000sq m Eli
& Edythe Broad Art Museum in January 2008, beating Austrian firm
Coop Himmelblau and American firms Morphosis, KPF and LA-based Randall
Stout. The university trustees authorised the start of construction at a meeting on December 11 2009.
The
three-storey building, which features dynamic glass and metal pleats,
according to the university, is set to be a world-class venue to
showcase the university’s permanent collection and to attract major
exhibitions.
The museum is named after philanthropist and former
student Eli Broad and his wife, who donated $26 million for the project
in 2007 — $18.5 million of which was for construction costs. It was the largest gift ever made to the university.
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BIG scores Faroe Islands competition win
The largest-ever commission on the Faroe
Islands has been won by BIG and Fuglark, to design a 19,200sq m
education centre in Torshavn.
The winning design, by BIG –
Bjarke Ingels Group – in collaboration with Fuglark, Lemming &
Eriksson, Sámal Johannesen, Martin E. Leo and KJ Elrad, was chosen from
five entries. The education centre, on a hillside on the
outskirts of Torshavn and with panoramic views of the sea and
mountains, will serve as a base for all educational programmes in the
region.
It will be the largest educational building project in the islands’
history, combining a secondary school and two colleges in one building
housing 1,200 students and 300 teachers. At the heart of the
three institutions will be an open rotunda, creating a natural
gathering point across floor levels and academic interests.
A stepped interior is intended to reflect the undulating Faroese
landscape with its alternating plateaus, stairwells and terraces
serving different social and academic activities.
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Hopkins unveils Brent civic centre

Hopkins Architects has unveiled the first image of its proposed new civic centre opposite Wembley Arena in north west London.
Brent
Council has already approved concept designs for the 250,000 sq ft
centre, and has begun consulting on proposals for a part eight and part
ten story complex, with offices for up to 2,000 council staff, a
library, registrar’s office, community hall and council chamber, as
well as a café, wedding garden and winter garden - aspects that will create attractive architectural photography.
The showpiece building is a controversial project for the cash strapped council. In
May it was announced Brent needed to find savings totalling £50 million
to balance its books and the council would not rule out job cuts. The
council has not said how much the new centre will cost, as it is in the
process of tendering for the works.
The work is due to begin in January 2011 and Brent hopes the building will be completed by 2013. Meanwhile,
Camden Council has confirmed it is to sell off its Euston Road town
hall and move into a new Bennetts Associates-designed building within
the King’s Cross Central development which completes in 2013.
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Heathrow Terminal 2 Interior
Heathrow Airport New Terminal 2 Airside - Category: Architectural Photography / Interior Photography
The new terminal 2 will cover 180,000 square metres - more than three times
its current size - and will initially be able to handle 20 million
passengers a year. BAA says the building will have a carbon footprint that
is 40% smaller than the buildings it is replacing, in part through the use
of solar panels on its roof as well as better use of natural daylight. The
design also allows for the addition of a satellite terminal, increasing its
capacity to 30 million passengers a year. Terminal 1 will close after this
second phase is completed, currently scheduled for 2019.
Despite its numbering, terminal 2 was the first of Heathrow’s terminals to
open. However, when in opened in 1955, it was called the Europa Building and
only changed its name after the opening of terminal 1 in 1969. When it
originally opened the terminal was designed to handle 1.2 million passengers
annually. It has regularly handled 8 million passengers in recent years. The numbering confusion will continue despite the closure. The new development
was originally due to be called Heathrow East but the terminal 2 name is
set to stay, despite terminal 1 eventually closing as well.
The Beatles passed through the terminal in 1964. They battled screaming hordes
to board their plane en route to conquering America.

The closure of terminal 2 will see Air France flights move from the terminal,
joining the other members of the SkyTeam alliance in terminal 4. Five Star
Alliance member carriers – Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Croatia Airlines and
TAP – transferred their flights to terminal 1 over the summer.
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Council backs CZWG’s Bournemouth development

Proposals by CZWG for a £50 million
mixed-use scheme in the middle of Bournemouth have been give the green
light by local planners.
The plan will see the existing Richmond Hill multi-storey car park refurbished and surrounded by five new buildings.
As well as two apartment buildings featuring 120 homes, the scheme
for developer Grosvenor will also include a 172-bedroom hotel along
with 1,500sq m of office space that will form the basis of eyecatching architectural photography. Earlier this year, the South West Design Review Panel praised the design's “verve and élan”.
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Aedas' Manchester college goes for planning
Designs by Aedas for a new building for Tameside College in Greater Manchester have been submitted to the local council.
The
facility, in St Petersfield in Ashton-under-Lyne, is for Ask
Developments and will provide the institution with an enterprise and
training base for budding entrepreneurs in the Tameside area.
Covering
an area of 2,800 sq m, the ‘knowledge mill’ is part of a larger
masterplan and will provide teaching space, staff offices, a café and
outdoor seating over three floors - a structure that will create impressive architectural photography. The scheme is being delivered
through a public private partnership with support from the North West
Regional Development Agency (NWDA).
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Bennett's Whitehall of the north

This is the first detailed image of Bennetts
Associates’ masterplan for a new base for thousands of civil servants
being relocated out of London. The plans for the 9 ha site, close to the Manchester’s Piccadilly Station, will go out to consultation next month. It
is hoped a planning application for the scheme – nicknamed “the
Whitehall of the north west” – will be lodged next year and work
completed by 2014.
The brief has been
to create a campus facility with large expanses of office space and
room for 5,000 staff, while also allowing individual departments to
retain their own identity. There are to be three main buildings and they will be no taller than around 12 storeys. The centrepiece of the scheme is a new public park, with the city’s River Medlock running through its heart. The government is in the process of decanting thousands of civil service departments away from the capital and into the regions.
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Central St Martins site to Make impact

Make's proposed refurbishment of the Soho
faculty of Britain’s most famous fashion school is expected to be
granted planning permission. Westminster Council’s planning committee is considering plans to
revamp Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design’s redbrick
Arts and Crafts building on Charing Cross Road.
The
college will move to a new campus in King’s Cross in 2011, and the
University of the Arts London, which incorporates Central Saint
Martins, hopes to sell the Charing Cross Road building, designed by EP
Wheeler in 1938, with planning permission for Make’s mixed-use scheme that will create strong architectural photography when complete. This
comprises shops, 27 flats, a community space that will be let at a
peppercorn rent and the addition of a sixth-floor roof extension, with
terraces for some of the flats.
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Tonkin Liu’s Dover seafront plan goes ahead
London-based practice Tonkin Liu has won planning permission for its £2 million scheme to overhaul the seafront at Dover in Kent
The
practice won the commission in April following a design competition
organised by the Landscape Institute to find a new vision for the
seaside town’s existing esplanade. Its scheme features three
custom cast concrete “waves” which create areas for seating and shelter
as well as reconnecting the beach to the esplanade.
The first
wave, the white concrete “lifting wave”, creates a ramp and stairs from
the beach, with a shingle garden planted with indigenous plants running
alongside. The second, “resting wave”, takes the form of a
pre-cast concrete retaining wall in sections which curves back to
create seating bays. The blocks have been cast with a rippled
surface to create a stratified effect, similar to the layers of
sediment that form the local chalk cliffs - features that will create strong architectural photography when complete.
The
final wave takes the form of a series of white columns that rise and
fall in height and follow the line of the listed regency terrace that
runs behind the esplanade. Holes punched in the columns house LED lighting which can be controlled to create a wave of light and other lighting patterns. The project is due for completion in summer 2010.
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Stanton Williams kicks off football hub for Hackney
Work starts this week on Stanton Williams’ new community and sports “hub” in Hackney Marshes, near London’s 2012 Olympic Park. The scheme includes a café, education facility and changing rooms for the marshes’ record-breaking 40 amateur football pitches.
Its
main entrance opens into a double-height reception area with views
through to the pitches, while corridors with glass ends lead to the
flexibly configured changing rooms. Upstairs, the café looks out over the pitches while the teaching spaces face a coppice and the River Lea.
Outside, gabion walls provide a vandal-resistant envelope and a
framework for climbing plants, while weathered steel is used for
cladding, shutters and louvres, detailing that will represent well in architectural photography when complete. Stanton Williams said the
building would change colour over time, “emphasising the combination of
nature and artifice that permeates the scheme”.
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Jestico & Whiles school wins planning
Jestico & Whiles has won planning permission for a £23 million secondary school in Harlow, Essex.
Work will begin on the 1,200-pupil Passmores School and Technology College in January and it will open in September 2011. The two-storey radial design with a gathering place at its heart was
inspired by the ethos of the school and by Harlow’s landscape-driven
approach to town planning. The flexible, timber-clad design was praised by Essex Design Review
Panel and the Essex Design Initiative, a partnership with the East of
England Development Agency and Cabe.
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Bond Bryam new faculty building for Sheffield Hallam
Local practice Bond Bryan has beaten off
more than 100 others to design a new £25 million building for Sheffield
Hallam University. The 9,500 sq m building for the
university’s faculty of development & society will feature
semitransparent walls to literally meet its brief of becoming a beacon
for the city.
In all, 109 firms expressed interest in
the scheme with the university whittling this down to 43 and then a
final shortlist of 10. The building will go up in the city’s cultural industries quarter, opposite the grade II listed Butcher Works building.
At
its heart are two teaching blocks positioned either side at high level
which are opened out to showcase the educational and social facilities
at ground level. The building also features roof gardens and a ‘saw tooth’ roof reflecting the look of historic Sheffield factories. The scheme is due to be completed in 2012.
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Birmingham Council approves Mecanoo library

Planning permission has been granted for
Mecanoo’s £193 million Library of Birmingham, a decision hailed by the
council as a “massive boost” to its architectural plans. Despite
serious concerns from Cabe and the Birmingham Civic Society over the
design, councillors voted seven to one in favour of the scheme, with
three abstentions, at a meeting this morning.
The news comes hot on the heels of the government’s announcement that it will not to list the original 1970s brutalist library.
The library will occupy a site on Centenary Square between the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (The REP) and Baskerville House. In
a separate move, plans for a £600 million transformation of the city’s
New Street station designed by Foreign Office Architects and Atkins for
Network Rail have this week been submitted for detailed planning
approval.
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BDP's Old Trafford redesign goes in to bat
Plans by BDP to redevelop Old Trafford cricket ground have been submitted to the local council.
The
Manchester venue missed out on staging a money-spinning Ashes test
match this summer after officials at the England & Wales Cricket
Board picked Cardiff to stage one of the five games instead. The
ECB has granted Old Trafford only one test match next year and
Lancashire County Cricket Club, which owns the ground, has been told to
carry out an overhaul in order to be considered for hosting test
matches in the future.
The
first phase of a modernisation plan, which involves building a new
conference and events suite, has already begun and is due to complete
next year. But BDP’s larger £32 million second phase – which
includes raising capacity of the ground to 25,000 as well as adding new
media facilities – has to be completed by autumn 2012 in order for Old
Trafford to apply to hold one of the Ashes matches the following year. Trafford
Council will also look at proposals to build a nearby 10,000sq m store
for retail giant Tesco, which would help fund the cricket ground
redevelopment.
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