White Design founding director Craig White is to speak at the RIBA Conference How to achieve low carbon housing on 30 September 2010. Craig will present the closing session, bringing together the programme’s main themes and presenting his own inspirational vision for a low-carbon future.

Hosted by RIBA South and South East Regions at the HG Wells Conference Centre in Woking, the event draws pioneers from the low carbon housing field and is open to RIBA members as well as colleagues from other disciplines. Call 0118 987 4900 for full details.

The pupils, staff and design team of Dartington Primary School have two causes for celebration this week. Completed by White Design in February, the school has just been awarded a BREEAM Excellent rating. The second piece of good news comes from the LABC Awards (Local Authority Building Control), where the school has now been shortlisted as one of 11 finalists for the best education project in the UK, having already won the South West regional award. The winner will  be announced on 2 November 2010.

Speaking in ‘Building Design Reviews’ on 23 July, project architect Andrew Docherty praised the client, Devon County Council, for their far-sightedness in holding on to their ideals for a truly sustainable building:
“In terms of materials and construction, Dartington must be one of the greenest schools in the UK. It was very brave of the local authority to go with it and not settle for a more conventional building.”

See www.bdonline.co.uk to read the full case study by Pamela Buxton, with photography by Gareth Gardner.

We recently welcomed our third work experience student this year, Enla Fees from Warwickshire, who spent a week at the practice in July. Enla has applied to study architecture at Sheffield Hallam University and was keen to see at first hand how an interdisciplinary practice operates.

Reflecting on her time with us Enla  explained:
“The high level of enthusiasm and passion within the practice is truly infectious. I cannot begin to convey the importance of having such an informative experience before finalising the decision to dedicate the next stage of my education to architecture... Altogether an inspiring week!”

At White Design we enjoy supporting young people who want to find out about a career in design and construction. This might be in the form of a work experience placement in our Bristol office, a careers talk at a local school, or through the interactive websites attached to each of our primary school commissions as they are being built. One of the formal ways we contribute to education is through the Ablaze and STEM programmes, both designed to raise the aspirations and skill levels of local young people.

Two designers from White Design - Anna Whitworth, a landscape architect and Jonny Marrion, who is studying for his part 2 professional qualification in architecture - were identified as “inspirational role models” and  recently volunteered to  lead projects and careers discussions at two Bristol schools.

Anna visited Oldbury Court Primary School in Downend and spoke to a class of 32 children, aged 10 to 11, while Jonny joined older students at the Grange School in Kingswood to help them design an Ecohome and garden.

Summing up their experiences, both Jonny and Anna agreed:
“What surprised us was how much the children already knew about the issues facing our planet today which is very promising. Everyone involved agreed it was a brilliant day and much fun was had by all”.

See www.ablazebristol.org.uk. and See www.stemnet.org.uk for more information about the Ablaze and STEM educational programmes.

STEMnet stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics network, an organisation set up to increase young people’s awareness of the advantages and opportunities of studying and following careers in this field.

Ablaze is a joint venture between Bristol City Council and over 100 Bristol businesses, which currently supports over 5000 local young people.

White Design has won the Best Education Development category in the (LABC) Local Authority Building Control (South West) “Building Excellence Awards”, for the design of Dartington Primary School and Nursery.

Anna Whitworth, Landscape Architect and Andrew Docherty, Project Architect, joined colleagues from Interserve, NPS (project managers) and Devon County Council to accept a certificate and trophy at an awards ceremony in Torquay on 18 June.

The award recognises the “high standards of design, construction and workmanship” achieved on the project.

June has brought awards success for two primary schools designed by White Design, one in South Wales and one in the South West of England.

Dartington Primary School was the winning building in the sustainability category of the Devon Building Control Partnership Quality and Sustainability Awards 2010, while Rogiet Primary School in Monmouthshire added to its success after achieving the UK BREEAM School Award by gaining separate recognition in the BREEAM Awards in Wales.

White Design is part of the team which helped design and build "BaleHaus@Bath", a two-storey, straw-bale house as part of a research project on the University of Bath campus.

Since October 2009 the building has been monitored for thermal performance and humidity levels - but the most dramatic moment of the programme so far was the recent test for wind resistance. During the experiment, hydraulic jacks pushed against the walls with an impact of more than four tonnes, equivalent to the dynamic force of a hurricane.

White Design is part of a UK-wide research project exploring how suburban neighbourhoods can adapt to climate change. The suburbs of three cities - Bristol, Oxford and Stockport - will be monitored in a 3 year project led by the Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments at the University of the West of England. Suburbs are being targeted because they are the most common type of urban area in the UK, housing 84% of the population.

Students in Melton Mowbray returned from the Easter holiday to start the term in their new school building. The ‘handover’ took place on 12 April for the 800-place John Ferneley secondary school  commissioned by Leicestershire County Council and designed by White Design with Willmott Dixon Construction.

On 26 March 2010 White Design handed over Ynysowen Community Primary School, a £4.9m project commissioned by Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council in Aberfan, South Wales. When they return from their Easter holidays, 340 children will move into the new school, which combines two existing primary schools and a nursery.

White Design is to take on the role of Sustainability and Design Consultant for the BAM Consortium’s Local Education Partnership (LEP) within Somerset County Council’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

Rogiet Primary School in Monmouthshire has won the 2010 BREEAM Schools Award, announced on 3 March at the Ecobuild exhibition in Earls Court, London. Judges selected Rogiet primary school as the category winner from a shortlist of 3 schools completed in 2010, all of which have excelled under BREEAM.

A team headed by White Design is one of 87 projects across the UK selected to test low carbon building technologies in the second stage of the Technology Strategy Board’s Retrofit for the Future programme. Science Minister Lord Drayson and Housing Minister John Healey announced the winners on 25 February as part of the government’s £17 million investment in new solutions to make the UK’s current housing stock more energy efficient.

Two White Design projects have been named by Professor Tom Woolley in his list of the ten best natural building projects in the UK, in the January 2010 issue of Sustain magazine (Volume 10, issue 06).

White Design has been appointed to design a combined infant and junior school in Caldicott, through Monmouthshire County Council's primary school framework.

White Design’s consultancy team is to co-author a Design Guide for Gower in a project supported by Swansea City Council, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Countryside Council for Wales. Chosen for its classic coastline and outstanding natural environment, Gower was the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to be designated in 1956.

The Levellers community in White Design is sponsoring a guide dog puppy called Otis.

White Design's Dartington Primary School is to be the focus of the January 2010 Exeter Architecture Forum.  Project architect Andrew Docherty will talk about our design for a school community whose strong environmental ethos we closely share.  Commissioned by Devon County Council, the £6m school will provide places for 420 pupils and is due for completion in late January 2010.

It was confirmed today that Rogiet Primary School in Monmouthshire has achieved the highest rating of all BREEAM Schools/Education schemes in the UK with its percentage score of 78.18%.

Rogiet Primary School in Monmouthshire is celebrating winning a Green Flag in the Eco Schools international award programme. Through the school's Eco Club, pupils have been closely involved with the environmental features of their new school such as rainwater harvesting and energy generation by wind turbine. The children will now help to audit the building's performance.

White Design is one of five practices invited to contribute to the exhibition 'Art, Ecology and the Economy', at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) in Haldon Forest, Exeter.

White Design, working with Willmott Dixon construction, has recently completed a new school which has scored 78.18% in the BREEAM Excellent rating - the highest achievement in Wales to date.  Rogiet Primary School-Ysgol Gynradd Rogiet, commissioned by Monmouthshire County Council, is a 210-place school with community facilities. At the open day on Friday 6 November 2009, head teacher Kathryn Evans said:

8 members of the White Design team took part in ‘Movember’ 2009, raising £450 for The Prostate Cancer Charity.

Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, with over 173,000
supporters across the globe. So far the charity has raised over £30m and has helped to spread health messages about early detection, diagnosis and treatment to millions of people.

Building work is progressing well on the site of the new Oxford Academy and Mabel Prichard Special Needs School which will replace the former Peers School in Littlemore, Oxford.

White Design has helped design and build "Balehaus@Bath", a two-storey, straw-bale house as part of a research project on the University of Bath campus. We are part of the team contributing to an innovative research programme at the university's  BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials.  BaleHaus™  is an entirely renewable way to construct homes, usingModCell^TM prefabricated straw bale cladding panels.

White Design's Builder of the Month Award recognises the hard work that sub-contractors contribute to produce wonderful buildings for our clients. The latest winner at our John Ferneley High School site in Melton Mowbray is Derry Cooper of Scaffold Services Ltd.

The charity Surf Sufficient uses surfing as part of its mission to generate funding and raise awareness of the regeneration of Weligama, a Sri Lankan settlement that was devastated by the tsunami.