Victoria shines at sustainability awards

Victoria University staff and students made almost a clean sweep of prizes at last week's Sustainable Building Conference held in Wellington.

At the conference dinner of the New Zealand Sustainable Building Conference (SB10 NZ) two awards were presented for the best student papers - and both went to Victoria students. The winner was Nick Smith for A Cost Benefit Analysis of Secondary Glazing as a Retrofit Alternative for New Zealand Households (co-author Nigel Isaacs). Highly Commended went to Lee Bint, for Water Performance Benchmarks for New Zealand: Understanding Water Consumption in Commercial Office Buildings (co-authors Robert Vale & Nigel Isaacs).

Highly Commended awards for Best Paper were given to Victoria's Dr George Baird and Nigel Isaacs.

"Such outstanding success amongst our academic peers and industry leaders affirms Victoria as a centre of excellence for sustainable building research," says Head of School Architecture Diane Brand.

The conference brought together a wide range of industry stakeholders to focus on the issue of sustainable building in the New Zealand environment. SB10 is one of a number of regional conferences being held across the globe in the lead up to the World Sustainable Building Conference (SB11) in Helsinki, to be held in mid October.