Newcastle’s Toffee Factory gains Main Award 2012 from RTPI North East
October 8, 2012
Toffee Factory was awarded a Main Award at the Royal Town Planning Institute’s (RTPI) North East regional award ceremony held on Friday 5th October at the Centre for Life, Newcastle.
The Toffee Factory was one of two 2012 Main Award winners with the judges praising the redevelopment of the former sweet factory, located in the Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle upon Tyne.
In their awards report the judges said:
“It is a tremendous achievement by Newcastle City Council, their architects, and partners, that the complex now forms a flagship project housing a successful cluster of creative businesses and contributing much to the dramatic multi-level townscape of the area. The project also has excellent environmental credentials, makes good use of colour contrasted with the old brickwork, and a striking lighting scheme.”
The annual RTPI North East regional awards scheme recognises, celebrates and publicises good planning practice in the North East of England. They are primarily planning awards, focussing on the role of planners and good planning.
The North East RTPI Judges Panel added:
“This year’s winners, and many of the other entries, demonstrate the value of vision to good planning practice: the added value provided by high aspirations, which turn good projects into outstanding projects; the creativity which inspires truly memorable schemes.”
Tim Bailey, Project Architect of xsite Architecture who collected the award for the Toffee Factory, said:
“Relationships in the production of a building extend outside just the client and design teams and winning an RTPI Regional Award this year is recognition of the contribution the planning system and Planners can make to achieving successful and well liked buildings. We are very pleased to be part of that delivery team and look forward to the continued high quality development of the Ouseburn.”
Lisa Tolan, Toffee Factory Centre Manager said:
“We are delighted to receive one of the Main Awards from RTPI North East recognising the Toffee Factory as an excellent example of planning and to receive praise for all the partners in the project from the judges. This is the third major industry award ceremony in the North East in which Toffee Factory has received awards and commendation for its successful redevelopment.”
Toffee Factory has won a sweep of regional awards in its first year of opening including the Project of the Year, Regeneration and highly commended in Design and Innovation and Commercial categories in the North East Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Renaissance Awards in April 2012 and goes forward to be considered for the RICS National Awards in late October 2012.
Toffee Factory also gained 3 awards in the RIBA Northern Awards in June 2012; the RIBA North East Sustainable Building of the Year and RIBA North East Building of the Year, and building architects xsite Architecture received one of 58 National RIBA Awards for their redevelopment of the Toffee Factory building.
“¡VAMOS! has presented Mexican Wrestling for a few years now and we were genuinely thrilled when the Toffee factory accepted us! It is an inspiring and beautiful location, with talent in abundance and a great team delivering it. It is also a site that many of the festival audience won't have been to, so there were many surprised faces!"
Nikolas Barrera – Director of ¡VAMOS! Festival
