Students deliver innovative steelwork designs

Sam Main collects the winners prize on behalf of the University of Manchester team for the Structures category

Winners of the 2014 Student Design Awards were announced at the Structural Steel Design Awards presentation.

These prestigious Awards were divided into three categories – Building Structures, Bridges and Architecture.

The competition brief for the Building Structures award was to design a structural enclosure to house an historic timber sailing ship as a tourist attraction in a dockyard site.

The client was looking for a structure that reflected the maritime heritage of the site, enabled preservation of the ship and provided valuable multi-storey space for exhibitions and corporate events.

For the Bridges award students were required to design a new single carriageway road bridge across intercity railway lines and an area of sidings. The site was predominantly flat and visible from all directions, so the bridge would be a major landmark.

Designing a very tall skyscraper in a city centre location that would be a vertical city accommodating offices, shops, a hotel, public realm, leisure facilities and residential flats was the brief for the Architecture award.

The Building Structures award was won by the University of Manchester with University of Nottingham and the University of Strathclyde collecting second and third prizes respectively.

Queen’s University Belfast won the Bridges award, ahead of Cardiff University and the University of Strathclyde.
Alexandr Valakh from the Manchester School of Architecture was the winner of the Architecture award, with teams from the University of Nottingham coming second and third.

The winning team in the Bridges category, Queen’s University Belfast, receive their award

Alexandr Valakh from the Manchester School of Architecture was the winner of the Architecture student design award