Golden pineapple comes home to Houlton following award win
Houlton School has scooped its fourth trophy in the space of four weeks following a string of accolades celebrating the transformation of the former Radio Rugby into Houlton School.
This latest win at the Pineapple Awards follows other recent project wins including ‘Best Project’ at the West Midlands Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Awards, ‘Refurbishment and Revitalisation’ at The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards and ‘Best use of Heritage’ at the 2022 Planning Awards.
The entry submitted by Houlton’s master developer Urban&Civic, Rugby Borough Council and lead architects on the project van Heyningen and Haward, saw the Houlton School project recognised for its ‘high quality retrofit’, which came to fruition as part of a joint venture with Aviva Investors.
The annual Pineapple Awards, by Festival of Place celebrates the very best in placemaking, recognising excellence in community engagement, activation, active travel, public space, creative retrofit and future of place.
The live awards ceremony, , took place on Wednesday 6th July at Boxpark Wembley, situated in the heart of Wembley Park.
Houlton secondary school, which opened its doors to founding year 7 pupils in September 2021 underwent a meticulous restoration process by Urban&Civic to restore the building’s heritage, combining the transformation and fabric upgrade of the listed 1929 buildings with three new state of the art teaching blocks.
Johanne Thomas, Regional Director, Communications, Communities and Partnerships: “We are over the moon to receive this award, validating what we know is a transformational and unique project for Houlton, Rugby and Urban&Civic.
“We’re all immensely proud of the transformation and it’s a pleasure for this to be recognised through national awards. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to celebrate with partners that worked closely with us - testament to the strength of partnership and collaboration throughout.”
The secondary school forms part of the infrastructure being delivered by Urban&Civic and Aviva to support the 6,200 home masterplan for Houlton. A primary school (St Gabriel’s), extensive green spaces and play parks, a local centre comprising a Visitor Centre, Co-op, Tuning Fork café, community centre and children’s nursery and the 5km link road connection Houlton to Rugby have already been delivered and some 1,000 homes are now occupied.
Might need to expand ever so slightly here, saying 'the former Rugby Radio Station' or suchlike...to appease the heritage side of it [KO1]
Roger that [CL2]
Any chance of a different word here? Used 'delivered' quite a bit [KO3]
changed the delivered in the para above and kept this one [CL4]
Actually LOVE this - I can see you saying it [KO5]
Ha ha ;) [CL6]
