A radical proposal to prefabricate complex junctions rather than simple components has won the BSRIA and Designing Buildings Wiki ‘Make Buildings Better’ competition which was seeking ideas to improve

Overall, 47 per cent of UK carbon emissions are generated, or influenced, by the construction industry, 80 per cent of which are from buildings in use. If the performance of buildings does not improve, emissions targets or the COP21 goal for keeping global warming below two degrees centigrade are unlikely to be achieved.

A total of 124 ideas were submitted, covering everything from networking groups of buildings to balance their energy use, to running buildings on algae. 

Most participants didn’t think new solutions were needed and instead felt we should make better use of the ones we already have. Some of the most interesting ideas were about changing behaviour, with a general feeling that improvement will only come as a result of intervention, whether in the form of legislation, incentives and penalties, education or automatic controls.

The winning idea came from Tom Hughes (pictured), director at architectural practice 2hD. He proposed that build quality could be improved by prefabricating complex junctions, rather than prefabricating simple components as we currently do. These would be produced to length and delivered to site pre-insulated, air sealed and finished. On-site work would then just involve filling in the areas between the junctions with timber, steel or concrete as required.

Tom said: “This flips the current situation, in which the easy-to-produce components are made off site and the very difficult junctions are made on site, under less-than-ideal conditions. Our experience tells us that buildings leak air and let in water at the junctions, not in the middle of elements, so the quality control of factory production is being applied in just the wrong places.”

The runners up were: Tamalee Basu, Jon-Scott Kohli, Carl O'Connor and Aris Kapsanakis..

Jayne Sunley, Knowledge Manager at BSRIA said: “We’re delighted with the variety and inventiveness of the entries submitted. Tom’s idea stood out as a genuinely practical and interesting way of tackling the performance deficit of buildings. So many problems occur at junctions, rather than within components themselves, it is an obvious place to focus attention.”

For more information about the winners and runners-up visit 

http://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Make_buildings_better_winners