BDP, three times BCO winner

The Roche head office building in Welwyn Garden City has won three major awards at the British Council of Offices awards dinner held last night in London.

Main contractor, Building Design Partnership won the prize for best regional corporate office building, best national corporate office building and the best of the best award for the Roche building. Last year BDP won the same three awards for the BBC Mailbox Project.

BDP director Chris Langston said: “The Roche project has been remarkable in many ways, as well as being a fine piece of design and execution it has also been an excellent example of a team working culture which was engendered by Roche, and to which BDP’s inter-disciplinary team provided an exact fit.”

BDP was appointed as architect, structural and environmental engineer, interior designer, landscape architect, lighting, acoustic and sustainability consultant. The QS was Clarus Consulting and the construction manager PCM.

The head office was part of a scheme by healthcare giant Roche to centralised its activities from a number of disparate buildings under one roof.

The BCO jury said: “At first it appears as just another unassuming low-rise addition to Shire Business Park, yet the sense of drama rises via a long ramp past water features to a spectacular double height entrance. Surprises continue inside, with massive 90m-long floors enabling whole departments to be ranged across a single level.”

Clever use of oval-shaped ceiling openings in the roof allows light to flood in to an internal day-lit street, producing a seamless continuity between outer and inner worlds.

Sustainable measures include one of Europe’s largest ground water cooling systems reducing energy load by 7.5%, and zero emission, ammonia chillers.

The building achieved a 10 out of 10 BREEAM excellent rating and complied with the new Part L requirements two years before the need to do so.

BDP delivered the building ahead of time and the client was also able to build an additional pharmacology building on the site without going over the original main budget.

Three of Turner & Townsend's projects also picked up four awards at last night's ceremony. The Eliot Park Innovation Centre, Nuneaton collected the award for best commercial workplace in the Midlands and East Anglia region. The firm also shared the national commercial workplace award with One Hanover Street in London.

The new Wellcome Trust headquarters building in Euston Road, London won the best corporate workplace for the London region whilst the best fit-out of workplace (large projects) in North England, North Wales and Northern Ireland category was won by the Northern Foods headquarters in Leeds.