World-beating Erne Campus wins top awards and sets the bar for energy efficient buildings for our towns and cities

The facility has been recognised as one of 26 UN Centres of Excellence for High Performance Buildings, ranking alongside the Apple 2 campus in California.

Hamilton Architects recognise that the design of energy efficient buildings for our cities and towns is a huge but imperative task.

The simple fact is that buildings account for at least 40% of all energy consumption across the globe and produce at least the same share in greenhouse gas emissions.

It is evident that while the technologies exist to mitigate against climate change, ‘green’ architecture design must become mainstream in order to bring about significant improvement.

Cognisance of everything environmental is essential in the creation and development of a project, whether for a new building or an existing building.

Erne Campus of South West College, designed by Hamilton Architects, was named UK Project of the Year at the RICS Awards 2022.

Completed at a cost of £34m, Erne Campus is officially the world’s first educational – and currently the largest – Passive House Premium rated building.

Chair of the judging panel, David Brooks-Wilson FRICS, said the project “represents an exemplar of how despite many obstacles that it needed to overcome, the project also scores highly in the social value.

“Not only has it generated a centre for excellence for local students of the built environment as a core curriculum subject, it has also raised the profile and the pride in all its inhabitants and neighbours in an area that has suffered much in recent times.”

The 8,000sqm state-of-the-art project in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, is the first building in the UK to achieve both PHP status and BREEAM outstanding accreditations.

Partner Mark Haslett said: “We take energy efficiency, carbon footprint, environmental protection and pollution prevention into prime consideration in all our schemes, from design conception to project delivery.

“A whole team of professional expertise is employed at each stage of development, with policy makers, structural designers, energy managers, construction managers, and consultants all playing their part.

“Erne Campus is just one, albeit world-beating, example of the design work Hamilton Architects is doing in the field of energy efficiency and environmental performance.

“All such projects, whether big or small, are making a tangible difference to the lives of their owners, their users and their community,” he added.

“As global energy efficiency ambitions soar, we look forward to playing an even bigger role in creating a built environment that enriches, rather than depletes, the planet’s resources.”

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