We are delighted to announce that the Active Classroom has continued its winning streak; picking up its 7th award since completion in 2016. Last night (Thursday 21st June), the classroom received recognition from Swansea University’s ‘Research & Innovation Awards 17/18’ by winning the ‘Outstanding Research & Collaboration’ category.
It was a hotly contested category with the Classroom up against two excellent projects: The Swansea Neurology Biobank and Raman-CRC: Transforming Cancer Detection in Primary Care. All entries were reviewed and scored by a panel of Swansea University peers and sponsors and we are delighted to have been declared winners of the category. The Active Classroom project was also nominated for the Queens Anniversary Prizes – the UK’s most prestigious form of national recognition for UK academic institutions, which will be announced in November 2018.
The Active Classroom was built to demonstrate all the latest renewable energy technologies being developed at SPECIFIC and by collaborative companies. The project involved 20 companies working together to test 8 new products and construction techniques such as Tata Steel trialling a new steel cladding product for the first time; BIPVco installing their first large scale photovoltaic roof; and Matrix Structures who supplied the interlocking panel system for the floor, walls and roofs – their largest project to date. We are also actively engaged with the Welsh and UK governments to change policies and regulations to drive this concept forward within the industry.
We’ll be hoping for further success in 2019, as we launched the UK’s first energy-positive office on the same day as the Swansea R&I Awards evening. This is the latest building in SPECIFIC’s full-scale demonstration programme, which aims to test and prove the ‘Buildings as Power Stations’ concept with a range of building uses. Whilst the Active Classroom was used to test technologies at different stages of development, the Active Office only uses commercially available technologies and existing supply chains. It demonstrates that the ‘Active Building’ approach is applicable now – there is no need to wait for new technology to become commercially available.
