Eurocode 1

Jenny Burridge of The Concrete Centre looks at the latest trends for tall buildings and considers some of the design, construction and material property benefits that the use of concrete brings.

The Concrete Centre’s annual student Structural Concrete competition, in partnership with Laing O’Rourke, has been won by a team from the University of Salford. The 2020 competition challenge for teams of engineering students was to design a high-rise residential building in a waterside redevelopment area in a regional city centre. The building needed to provide two storeys of retail area with studio, one and two-bedroom apartments above, together with four two-storey penthouse apartments. 

The current Eurocode 2 was published in 2004 and requires updating to reflect developments both in our understanding of concrete behaviour and in the materials we use. The update, which started several years ago, is approaching a significant milestone.

Exploring the important role that concrete plays in supporting green infrastructure in the UK and its strong biodiversity credentials. Elaine Toogood of The Concrete Centre reports.

Decarbonising concrete has been a focus of the industry for 30 years. MPA UK Concrete, the group representing the UK concrete industry, has developed a framework to help inform the delivery of an ambitious roadmap for the UK concrete and cement sector to deliver net negative emissions by 2050.

In this new Sustainability Series, The Concrete Centre will provide a wealth of information and resources to enable designers to specify sustainable concrete, design sustainably with concrete, navigate the research and data available to inform sustainable decision-making as well as provide insights into the innovation and research that will shape the future of concrete.

Emily Bonner is part of the Structural Engineering team at The Concrete Centre. As well as developing new resources to assist structural engineers designing with concrete, Emily is also a STEM ambassador. In this blog Emily talks about what being a STEM ambassador means to her.

Offsite construction is in demand. But rather than highlight the much-repeated benefits of design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA) I have considered here the significant benefits that concrete can bring to offsite construction that can save carbon and cost as well as contribute to health, wellbeing and our adaptation to climate change.

As we adjust to restrictions on our movement and the lockdown of schools and workplaces, this update from The Concrete Centre aims to help those working from home and those wanting to access design guidance. 

Futurebuild 2020 was the busiest year in recent memory, with the climate challenge at the top of the built environment agenda the event was popular with specifiers and sustainability experts alike.