Mid Sussex Design Awards 2018

Design Award Winner in the Sustainability Category (A)

A development of 26 affordable family homes built for local residents on an exception site. All homes meet the Passivhaus standard, with insulation values two and a half times more efficient and air tightness five times better than housing built to current building regulation standards. By utilising mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, energy use is 3 times less than the average built home, with only two radiators required in each house for use during exceptionally cold conditions. There is no need for photovoltaic roof panels giving a cluttered free roof scape.

Design Award Winner in the Small-Scale Residential Category (B) and
Commendation in the Sustainability Category (A)

This project consists of the conversion and adaptation of a former hostel building, set in the Tobias School of Art and Therapy campus, into 9 one and two bedroomed flats, a guest apartment and community space. The buildings forming the campus are the only known buildings in the UK designed by Erik Asmussen and date from 1965. The original important features have been retained and the new elements are sympathetic to Asmussen’s original design intentions. The scheme includes a small stand-alone building of similar design and form containing the biomass woodchip boiler that serves a district heating system for the existing community, the new apartments and spaces and has adequate capacity to serve a future phase of 5 dwellings.

Commendation in the Small-Scale Housing Category (B)

From the Whitemans Green road frontage there is little to give a clue as to the development tucked away behind the gabled elevation of the first property. The other 5 houses are accessed from a new long winding access road. The design and detailing of the houses is contemporary, but has drawn on examples of the architecture locally to the site, incorporating a palette of materials of brickwork, render, horizontal timber boarding, slate roofs and stone window reveals to create a design to reduce the mass of each individual dwelling.

Design Award Winner in the Large-Scale Residential Category (C)

This development of 186 houses and apartments completed in 2013 was a joint venture between Clarion Housing Housing Association and Linden Homes. The estate was originally built by Mid Sussex District Council in the mid 60's using a metal framed building system. A poor and outdated layout, together with the degradation of the two storey flat roofed accommodation led to the Council and Clarion Housing setting up a community steering group in 2005 to agree a master plan for the total redevelopment of the site to include 115 private homes and 71 social rented properties pepper-potted throughout the scheme. The two and three storied homes utilise a simple palette of face brickwork, painted render, weatherboarding and grey tiled roofs.

Commendation in the Large-Scale Residential Category (C)

A number of dated redundant office buildings occupied this important town centre site prior to the development of this residential scheme. MSDC set out the aspirations for this site in the Burgess Hill Town Centre Master Plan SPD, proposing Queen Elizabeth Avenue to be transformed into an attractive boulevard to improve the entrance to Burgess Hill from the west, with new buildings actively engaging with the road frontage. This development consists of 56 Assisted Living extra care units, 46 Retirement Living apartments and communal facilities and 22 age-restricted affordable apartments in three 4 and 5-storey blocks. The buildings principal facades face onto Queen Elizabeth Avenue with the return elevations fronting onto School Close and The Brow where the rear car parking is also accessed.

Design Award Winner in the Non-Residential Category (D)

This new build purpose built two storey school and nursery provides 140 places for 2 – 19 year old children with special educational needs and Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties set within a shared campus with London Meed Primary School and Oakmeeds Community College in Burgess Hill. The school is rectilinear in plan with a wide central corridor providing access to spaces both sides. From the entrance and parking, the built form is of a simple brick public facade, punctuated by a limited number of windows. This is in complete contracts to the other side, where it opens up to engage with the playground. By contrast the other side opens up to engage with the playground. Here, a series of ‘pavilions’ have cleverly allowed natural light to flood the corridor space by creating a number of internal glazed atriums that are open to the elements which are used for play areas, gardens and even a chicken coop providing joyful distinctive areas of interest.

Commendation in the Non-Residential Category (D)

Set within the historical grounds of this country hotel is a two storey flat-roofed linear building containing 19 luxury bedroom suites. Its contemporary design is in complete contrast to the mix of Victorian Gothic and Neo-Classical styles that characterise the main hotel building. The front façade of the new building faces the gravel approach to the main reception building and facilities and is articulated with projecting first floor balconies below an over-sailing roof. The support columns, balconies and cladding material are of wood, while the rear elevation is appropriately simpler in detail as it is adjacent the parking facilities. A spacious double height glazed entrance lobby houses the staircase and lift.