The winner of this year’s Galvanizing in Architecture Award was a project designed by CF Møller Architects with the artist Conrad Shawcross

Photo: Mark Hadden

Among the winners of this year’s Galvanizing Awards, organised annually by the Galvanizers Association, is the Greenwich Low Carbon Energy Centre, a district heating provider for the Greenwich Peninsula in south-east London designed by CF Møller Architects. The 49m high stack tower is clad in a complex metal cladding formed of hundreds of triangular panels, designed by the artist Conrad Shawcross. Five interconnected galvanized steel ladder frames are clad with the perforated aluminium panels, each the size of a London bus, that fold across the surface to form intricate geometric patterns that create a dynamic surface which plays with perspective. The centre won the Galvanizing in Architecture Award.

Photo: Mark Hadden

Photo: Daniel Shearing, image courtesy of Ramboll

The 2017 Galvanizing in Engineering Award went to Hastings Pier Charity for the recently completed £14.2m refurbishment of Hastings Pier, which includes the use of galvanized replacement trusses, cross beams and ties to withstand the aggressive marine environment. Built in 1872, the 272m long pier was designed by the great pier engineer Eugenius Birch. New principal truss members were designed to double-span, allowing for replacement columns to be installed more easily when required in the future – given the unknown capacity of the remaining elements. A cross-laminated timber pavilion and visitor centre on the pier, using timber salvaged from fire damage to the pier in 2010, was designed by dRMM.

Photo: Martin Gardner

Snug Architects won the Galvanizing in Detail award for their use of a galvanized steel panels and a galvanized ramp as part of a new configuration of beach huts at Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire. The 1960s beach huts were destroyed in a storm three years ago and to help the new precast concrete huts able to withstand even the most extreme of storms they are set back on the lower promenade into the upper prom, which has been extended to cover the roof of the huts. A cranked galvanized ramped bridge on the western end of the beach wraps around a pill box and over the waves and rocks below, facilitating access to the lower promenade. The bridge deck and balustrade are made from perforated galvanized metal to help withstand upward wave loads.

The other main award winners were Ian Ritchie Architects, who won the Duplex Award for the duplex coating of painted galvanizing at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre neuroscience research institute in London, pictured above, and Global Rail Construction for the Crossrail West Gantries in London, pictured below. Here galvanized helical steel foundations have been used, which have greater potential for reuse and recycling than concrete foundations.

Honourable mentions went to Platform 5 Architects for Backwater, a new detached home on a promontory in the Norfolk Broads and Hudson Architects/Ben Coode-Adams for Feeringbury Barn Silo in Essex. The former has a subframe of galvanized steel ground beams elevated about the high water mark, creating a raft that projects over the water’s edge. The converted silo provides guest accommodation and includes an inside surface finished with a new galvanized corrugated shell to maintain an industrial aesthetic.