Students from the University of Nottingham have won top prizes in the steel industry’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Second-year architecture student Li Gan from the School of the Built Environment beat final-year students from all over Europe to take first prize in the Corus student Architecture competition. And a team of four students from the School of Civil Engineering won a second prize with their sleek airport terminal and air traffic control tower in the Structure category.

The annual Structural Steel Design Awards have been running for 40 years. They’re sponsored by the British Constructional Steelwork Association and the steel giant Corus. The award ceremony and gala dinner at the V & A museum in London is the most significant event in the steel industry calendar. Teams from industry compete in a variety of categories, and universities are invited to compete in three student categories. This year’s top industrial award went to the consortium who built Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 for BAA.

Li Gan: ‘living with waste’

The Corus student architecture competition aims to give budding architects a creative vehicle for learning about the use of steel in buildings. Li Gan’s winning design fulfilled a brief to design an urban housing scheme which addresses the problem of ‘living with waste’. Under the supervision of his tutor, Bradley Starkey, Li’s innovative housing scheme used gas turbine technology to generate energy from domestic rubbish. The judges commended him on his ambitious and thought-provoking response to the brief and to his evocative drawings. Steel is one of the most readily recyclable materials and had to feature in his design entry. He won a prize of £1,000.

Andrew Gamblen, Simon Lea-Wilson, Robert Weiss and Alexander Alvarez: airport terminal building and control tower

Nottingham’s Civil Engineering team came second in the Corus student Structural Design competition. The brief was to prepare an outline design for a new airport terminal building and control tower. Andrew Gamblen, Simon Lea-Wilson, Robert Weiss and Alexander Alvarez are all third year MEng students. The four entered the competition as part of their curriculum module on steel structures supervised by Associate Professor, Dr Walid Tizani. The students share a prize of £1,600. The judges said; “Their design makes an outstanding architectural statement, achieved by simple, practical means.  The control tower is classical and elegant.”

Both of Nottingham’s winning designs will be on display in Gallery 2 at the Royal Institute of British Architects at 66 Portland Place, London, until Sunday 26th August 2008.

Full list of Corus Student Awards winners

Architecture

1st Place – University of Nottingham, Li Gan

2nd Place – Politecnico di Milano

2nd Place – Manchester School of Architecture

Special Commendation – University of Westminster

Structures

1st Place – University of Cardiff

2nd Place – University of Nottingham

3rd Place – London Southbank University

Bridges

1st Place – University of Southampton

2nd Place – London Southbank University

3rd Place – Anglia Ruskin University

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