University professor appointed to jury panel for prestigious architecture awards
Professor Peter Barrett from the University’s School of the Built Environment has been selected to join the judging panel for the world’s biggest architectural awards programme, owing to his extensive range of research and academic texts.
The World Architecture News (WAN) Awards have become the biggest of their type in the world within just five years, and the main news site can boast in excess of 140,000 readers from 72 countries, along with 55,000 app users.
There are a number of categories for the judges to assess, and they will each be assigned a particular category in accordance with their particular areas of expertise.
The categories include designs for urban regeneration, healthcare, hotel of the year and education; Professor Barrett will be one of the judges for the latter, due to his keen interest in the design of primary schools and optimising learning spaces.
Once the WAN has shortlisted the projects down to six applications, Professor Barrett and the other members of the education design panel will determine the winners. There will be an award for projects completed within the past three years, and one for projects that are at the design stage.
Entrants in last year’s education category were as varied as they were creative, with participants from all corners of the world, including Thailand, Australia, Brazil and the USA. The winner for a completed education design was Stanton Williams from London.
Professor Barrett said: “I am delighted to be involved in this process and look forward to discussing a range of excellent educational designs with my expert jury colleagues and selecting the winner.”
One of Professor Barrett’s most recent collaborative studies took place from September 2011 to June 2012, in which the University, with support from architectural practice, IBI Nightingale Associates, conducted research on seven primary schools across Blackpool. Over the course of the academic year, the study looked at 34 classrooms with different learning environments and age groups.
The study collected data from 751 pupils, such as their age, gender and performance levels in maths, reading and writing at the start and end of the academic year. Researchers then evaluated the classroom environment in terms of natural light, noise, temperature and colour, among other factors. Findings showed that 73% of the variation in pupil performance at class level could be explained by the factors that had been measured. See http://www.ri.salford.ac.uk/peterbarrett/m/?s=14 for more details.
This research is being taken forward with support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for a further 18 months and will cover 20 more schools in different parts of the UK.
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