The Enterprise Centre

Our team’s entry was runner up in this competition to create an exemplar low carbon building, located at the gateway to the UEA campus and adjoining the historic Earlham Hall.

The project sought to bring together teaching and learning facilities with work spaces for local companies, including bio-renewables specialist InCrops, together with business incubation units for start-up businesses.

The design met the requirements of BREEAM Outstanding as well as Passivhaus, which was achieved through the use of timber structure and a range of innovative low carbon materials such as Hemclad lime hemp cladding panels.

AD’s concept involved combining the teaching and working areas to encourage collaboration and interaction between academe and business, with workshops and lecture theatre arranged as ‘leaves’, symbolising the connection with natural materials and bio-based products of both the building’s users and its construction.