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Department of Engineering

Young Structural Engineer of the Year 2010

Young Structural Engineer of the Year 2010

Village Green construction, by Tim Salmon

The Institution of Structural Engineers have announced the Young Structural Engineer of the Year 2010. This year's first and second prize winners along with one of the two highly commended certificates were awarded to graduates from the Department. The winner is graduate Timothy Salmon of Structure Workshop for his submission Village Green Festival Stage. Peter Winslow was chosen as the runner up for his project Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, Athens. The YSE competition is regularly run and awarded to young structural engineers who have demonstrated outstanding performance and who show exceptional promise for the future. Tim received £1,500 and a certificate of commendation; Pete received £500 and a certificate.

The judges; John Busby and David Vesey said 'we were very impressed by the quality of all of the submissions and would like to thank the candidates for their hard work. We would particularly like to commend Nikolaos Socratous of Arup Associates for his entry. Also we would like to congratulate the firms for whom they work for the support they have given in developing these young engineers who are the future of our profession.'

Winner - Timothy Salmon of Structure Workshop

Project title - Village Green Festival Stage

Info: Tim graduated from the University of Cambridge with a MEng in civil and structural engineering. In his submission Tim described his work developing a demountable stage for the Village Green Festival, a free annual arts and music festival in Southend.

The judges were particularly impressed by:

  • The way he met the architectural aspiration for the stage through the use of polycarbonate sheet as the web for polycarbonate/timber composite beams.
  • Tim's use of engineering first principles in designing the polycarbonate and timber composite beams.
  • His coordination of highly practical full scale load testing of a beam to validate the design approach.
  • Design sketches of details that demonstrated a creative, confident and mature approach to design.

Tim says "The architectural aim of the stage design was to produce something totally different to the standard aluminium frames used at most festivals. With a timber frame and structural polycarbonate, we were able to avoid the need for any cross-bracing, which would have compromised the architectural effect. This was a challenge first in terms of analysing the structural behaviour of the composite structure, and then justifying the polycarbonate for this use. The full scale load test of part of the structure gave us clear evidence of its capabilities, which gave us further confidence in our design."

Runner up - Peter Winslow of Expedition Engineering

Project title - Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, Athens

Info: Pete graduated from the University of Cambridge with a MEng in civil, structural and environmental engineering. He followed this with a PhD in structural engineering, also at Cambridge.

His submission was based on his role on the Athens Cultural Centre project for Expedition on which he was responsible for developing the design of a large 10,000m2 architecturally expressed canopy with integrated photovoltaic panels.

Pete says "I have been working on a new Cultural Centre for Athens with Renzo Piano, which includes new homes for the Greek National Opera and for the Greek National Library http://www.snf.org/snfcc/EN/default.php. My role has been the design of a large 10,000m2 architecturally expressed canopy with integrated solar photovoltaic panels. The canopy involves several novel structural engineering concepts and will be a prominent addition to the Athens skyline."

Highly Commended - Nikolaos Socratous of Arup Associates

Project title - Integrating Maths, Architecture & Structural Engineering

Info: Nik graduated from the University of Cambridge with a MEng in civil, structural and environmental engineering in 2006. He then started his structural engineering career in Arup Associates.

Nik says: "My report “Integrating Mathematics, Architecture and Structural Engineering” is based on my involvement in the design of the new department of Engineering and Computing science of Coventry University. This work is an illustration of how structural engineers, using their strong technical backgrounds, can use Mathematics, Physics and Engineering principles as tools for generating architectural concepts. By closely collaborating with the architects, I was able to use pure Euclidean geometry and the relative sizes of the planets of our solar system to define the overall footprint of the building and the design of the break out spaces. Other innovative concepts include the translation of the Fibonacci series into a binary code which was used to define a façade pattern and also using the structural analysis force diagram to create a featured steelwork structure in the main atrium zone with conceptual references to Mondrian’s art."

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