El Salvador Project wins at the IStructE Structural Awards

The El Salvador Project, led by students and alumni from the Department, recently won the Sustainability Award at the IStructE's Structural Awards.

The IStructE's Structural Awards, held in November 2015, is an international competition that celebrates excellent structural engineering projects from a range of categories and sizes.

The Sustainability Award is presented to projects where an outstanding commitment to sustainability and respect for the environment is integral to the structural design.

The 'Housing for Low-Income Communities' project, which was a collaboration between the El Salvador Project, Arup, REDES, and Engage for Development, developed an alternative and permanent, low-cost and appropriate housing for low-income communities in El Salvador, blending modern engineering principles and technologies with traditional construction methods, creating a low-tech house design that is immediately familiar to local communities, but with a modern look.

The design uses renewable materials such as timber and cane, making it more sustainable than existing designs and providing a new livelihood for rural communities. The design also utilises new technologies that make it exceptionally earthquake resistant. As it is a 'vernacular-improved design', it takes the traditional bahareque design and improves it, making it more durable and seismically-safer, and no more expensive than the reinforced blockwork alternative.

The award is a testament to the work that the project has been doing in El Salvador for the last 13 years and all the people who have been involved during this time.