Lafarge UK’s innovative solution to sustainable housing – ‘Cool Concrete’ – was announced as the winner of the UK Green Building Council’s prestigious Ecobuild Sustainable Stand Award.
The bespoke ‘Cool Concrete’ building featured many of Lafarge’s pioneering products, materials and building solutions from its UK Cement, Aggregates, Readymix, Asphalt and Construction Solutions businesses.
The award, sponsored by Willmott Dixon, is presented to an Ecobuild exhibitor whose stand demonstrates outstanding sustainability credentials across a number of criteria. These include resource efficiency, the use of responsibly sourced products, carbon footprint minimisation and the extent to which the stand’s components can be recycled after the show. Health and safety was also a key consideration for judges when assessing the materials used and how the stand had been constructed.
Lafarge UK beat off stiff competition from other exhibitors at the world’s biggest forum for sustainable construction to win the top prize for a stand over 100m2, which represented a life-sized carbon friendly home.
Based on the minimalist design of the Barcelona Pavilion by prestigious architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, ‘Cool Concrete’ combined Lafarge’s 20 Rules of Sustainable Construction which underpin the company’s ethos, placing sustainability at the heart of the business and its operations. These range from building using the benefits of concrete’s thermal mass to using recycled rain water, sourcing materials from local suppliers, and exploiting natural lighting.
Paul King, CEO, UK Green Building Council comments: “Ecobuild is a sustainability exhibition, so it’s vital that exhibitors practice what they preach and that was clearly evident with Lafarge’s winning stand. It was an innovative way to feature a range of products, which perfectly highlighted Lafarge’s strong sustainability credentials.”
Emma Hines, Sustainable Construction and Development Manager at Lafarge Aggregates & Concrete UK, said: “We were delighted to be awarded this prestigious award. We demonstrated Lafarge’s commitment to pioneering innovative sustainable construction solutions for the future. Cool Concrete is an excellent example of how concrete and the use of its thermal mass properties can help the UK reach increasingly tough carbon reduction targets. Building to our 20 rules for sustainable construction we were able to show visitors to Ecobuild how any building, like Cool Concrete, can contribute to the demand for zero carbon living by using concretes many sustainable credentials along with other sustainable construction methods and materials.”