The Civic Trust’s second annual Student Award, run in association with the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at Dundee University, gives recognition to three top students from the Department.
The winner of the Award is Evan McColl, who is a member of the Hilltown Collective – Sustainable Urban Community group. Evan produced an excellent, comprehensive and well-thought-out blueprint for transforming the Hilltown area.
After extensive research into the different critical elements operating against the Hilltown functioning as a ‘great space’, Evan’s work shows how the southern part of the district could be transformed into a fully formed neighbourhood. The vision comes complete with an urban farm and mixed-use core incorporating a number of uses. These include a library and café, residential units with workshops and gallery space, multi-generational housing, food hall, plaza area with outdoor seating, theatre and cinema. The plan also includes a pedestrian and cycle skyway link and envisages the roof spaces of the existing Dallfield multis being adapted to form roof gardens and games courts.
Evan’s submission also provides drawings and diagrams of environmental benefits, including a biomass boiler providing underfloor heating to public areas; air source heat pumps with underfloor heating for residential areas; photovoltaic arrays on roofs; and green walls providing vertical garden space within housing.
The runners up are Sean Noon, with an exciting design for a new central sports centre for the city; and Nguyenova Thao Vi, who envisaged extending the University campus towards the River Tay, with a new Library built partly over the water.
The entries were examined by a judging panel from Dundee Civic Trust. Our Chairman, Donald Gordon, said: ‘We are delighted to be able to support, encourage and reward the excellent work being done in the Department by our future architects and planners. How the city will look in the years to come may depend to some extent on the learning and inspiration that they acquire as students.’
Cameron Wilson, the Head of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Dundee, commented: ‘The prize winners will be pleased and honoured to be announced as recipients of the Dundee Civic Trust Student Award. A “thank you” to the Civic Trust for your energies and continuing to support this award for our students.”
The awards will be presented to the students at a later date.