Breathing Buildings are celebrating their latest award win. The Cambridge based natural ventilation specialists won the CIBSE Building Services, Best Practice award at the Construction Excellence North East awards 2012.

The award, which was presented jointly to Breathing Buildings and building services consultants Mott MacDonald, was in recognition of their work on the Hougton-Le-Spring Primary Care Centre in Sunderland.

Breathing Buildings was appointed by the NHS at a very early stage of the project, to work with P+HS architects and Mott MacDonald. The aim was to devise a truly low carbon ventilation solution in order to design an energy efficient building. The novel ventilation solution, which was awarded an innovation credit in the BREEAM assessment, involved the construction of a 50m long thermal wall which was erected along the spine of the building. The wall is split into 49 individual shafts to separate the ventilation for individual spaces and therefore reduce the potential for infection transfer within the building.

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Houghton-Le-Spring Primary Care Centre also won the CENE Legacy Award for Sustainability. This follows the recent BREEAM Award which the building received, making it the first healthcare centre in the UK to achieve a BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ rating. Breathing Buildings' low energy ventilation system played a key role in helping the building achieve these awards.