'SMART' Classrooms finalist in top award
18 November 2011
From (l to r) Frank Mills, Lord Stafford Awards judge, and Colin Bridges, Architectural Technologist at EKV Design, with a model of the SMART-Pod unit
"Not only will SMART-Pods be easy to assemble and to move, they would significantly reduce an organisation's building costs and the amount of polluting emissions produced."
”Jonathan Naden is Managing Director of EKV Design
Dr Boris Ceranic from the Built Environment Research Group has been involved in a project developing 'green' classrooms which can be built in a day and which reached the finals of a prestigious regional business award.
The SMART-Pod project - led by the University of Derby in partnership with De Montfort University, and Derbyshire companies EKV Design and T4 Sustainability Ltd - was one of five finalists competing in the 'Open Collaboration' category of the 2011 Lord Stafford Awards. The finalists' dinner was held last night,17 Thursday November at the University of Birmingham's Great Hall.
SMART-Pod units, currently under development, could be assembled on any site in around 24 hours using pre-prepared parts. They will contain their own power, water and other services using environmentally friendly technology.
The annual Lord Stafford Awards celebrate collaborations between businesses and universities.
As well as providing schools with extra classroom space that could be moved to different locations at short notice it's thought the SMART-Pod design could easily be adapted for use by businesses, the military and for natural disaster relief efforts. Units could be linked together or grouped on one level, or even stacked to meet the need for more room, and would be re-usable and recyclable.
The units would provide their own electricity to run lights and computers through environmental technologies such as photovoltaic (solar energy) panels and wind turbines, use highly insulated building materials to reduce heat loss, and could provide some of their own water supply through rainwater capture and treatment.
The SMART-Pod development project was funded by the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) and the European Regional Development Fund(ERDF), through a Collaborative Research and Development Grant managed by the Sustainable Construction iNet initiative.
