Animal Studies Centre shortlisted for AJ Architecture Award

Dudley College of Technology’s Animal Studies Centre has been shortlisted in the Refurb (up to £10 million) category of the 2025 AJ Architecture Awards.

Every scheme shortlisted for an AJ Architecture Award is visited by an expert panel of judges, who will consider how each project has met or exceeded its brief, how it has promoted client or community engagement, and how it has excelled in the use of space or sense of place.

The new home for Dudley College’s Animal Care and Welfare Department was created through a deep retrofit of a mid-twentieth century campus building. Specialist spaces are integrated with flexible teaching and learning spaces to educate students in animal care and husbandry.

Finishing on time and under budget, the Animal Studies Centre has been a successful first outing for ‘IPI Lite’ – a variation of the Integrated Project Insurance (IPI) procurement model, where all the main parties (client, architect, engineers, contractors, and consultants) sign up to an alliance contract with conditions that incentivise shared responsibility and close collaboration.

The original brief called for demolition and new build. Challenging this new build approach, the IPI Alliance team demonstrated that a sustainable retrofit could achieve the same functional outcomes with a far lower carbon footprint and for the same cost.

This included the necessary 20% reduction to the build cost to account for VAT and resulted in cutting the embodied carbon of the buildings structure to just 51kgCO2e/m2, far below LETI school targets of 276kgCO2e/m2 (for new build structure).

ASC IPI Alliance Team

Cullinan Studio (Architect + Principal Designer)
Cundall (Civil, Structural + Sustainability Engineer)
Derry Building Services (MEP design + contractor)
Dudley College of Technology (Client)
Fulcro (Digital Co-ordinator)
IPInitiatives (Independent Facilitator)
Speller Metcalfe (Primary Constructor)