RIBA's greenest winners

摘要

Dramatic natural landscapes often elicit exemplar green buildings. Nature itself may be the source of inspiration, or an environmentally-minded client, or perhaps a passionate designer. When all three come together, the alchemy produces exceptional results. Such was the case in Adam Khan's Brockholes Visitor Centre, my top pick of last year's awards. Such is also the case this year. If the RIBA were to select a Sustainable Building of the Year, it would surely be Heneghan Peng Architects' striking Visitors' Centre at Giant's Causeway, a Unesco World Heritage site in Northern Ireland owned by the National Trust. This project has been conceived with a design life of 100 years. When was the last time a client asked for that? Aside from its robust approach to sustainable design, the project caught my eye because it included 'in-use' performance figures for the first nine months of occupation alongside predicted numbers. And, even more remarkably, the in-use numbers were lower than the predicted targets: no performance gap here.