The Prof. Lord Bhattacharyya Building, home to the National Automotive Innovation Centre, has won a highly prestigious Wood Award for its structural excellence.

The Wood Awards are the UK’s premier competition for excellence in architecture and product design in wood. The Awards’ elite independent judging panel, of professional experts and specialists, visited all the shortlisted projects in person, making the Wood Awards as meaningful and rigorous a competition as possible.

Commenting on the building’s outstanding design, the judges said Prof. Lord Bhattacharyya Building was: “No doubt a product of a client with a passion for superb engineering and a skilful architect able to take up the challenge. The visiting panel was unanimous in the view that this was an award-worthy building.”

This award comes just weeks after the Building was recognised as one of the best workplaces in the Midlands and Central England at the annual British Council for Offices (BCO) regional awards; won Building Magazine Project of the Year at the Building Awards 2020; and won AIA Excellence in Design Awards 2020 for sustainability.

This year, the Prof. Lord Bhattacharyya Building has also been shortlisted for a RIBA West Midlands regional awards; FX International Interior Design Award and 2021 Civic Trust Awards Regional Finalist.

Based at the University of Warwick, the Building was officially open in February 2020 by HRH The Prince of Wales. It is a partnership between WMG, University of Warwick, Jaguar Land Rover, and Tata Motors, and is the largest of its kind in Europe and is well timed, arriving when a global mobility revolution is underway, with a new age for transport mobility.

A beacon for automotive research it brings together the brightest minds from industry and academia, to develop future vehicles and mobility solutions. It is home to up to 1,000 staff working across design, engineering and research, as well as future engineers on degree programmes.

Designed by Cullinan Studios the brief for the Centre was for simplicity and strength of purpose, turning a complex assembly of spaces into an immediately legible building.