Awards: HLM; Yorkshire Building Society; Pinsent Masons
SHEFFIELD-based HLM has won an international ideas competition to design a new Circus School in Moscow.
The competition, run by Concours d’Architecture, was to design a contemporary space for aspiring circus performers, taking into account the special requirements of a circus, as well as the urban context and impact of the building.
Belinda Ercan and Maryam Fazel designed the winning entry called ‘Elytra’, which was described as “a well-deserved gem towering over Moscow’s culturally diverse Tverskoy district”.
The design aims to provide a new environment to inspire creativity and to connect visitors and performers, while providing a new home for Moscow’s thriving art and culture scene.
Jeremy Pickard, HLM’s design director, said: “Using the competition as a mechanism within the HLM Academy to further explore different design rocesses and form-making, led to a series of extremely interesting and thought-provoking submissions, which challenged our regional teams to deliver ideas within an extremely short space of time.
“We are extremely pleased with the result, and thoroughly enjoy the platform AC-CA provides for designers of all ages and experience to test themselves on such a diverse range of briefs.”
HLM is a practice offering architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, master planning, interior design and sustainability expertise.
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YORKSHIRE Building Society was a double winner, including being named Business of the Year, at the Third Sector Business Charity Awards 2016.
The Society won the top prize as well as winning the Employee Engagement Initiative of the Year category for its colleague volunteering programme.
The awards scheme recognises the outstanding contribution UK businesses make to good causes.
In 2015 the Society introduced a policy that allows colleagues to take up to 31 hours of paid volunteering leave each year supporting a variety of different charities and good causes.
Yorkshire Building Society’s head of corporate affairs, Tanya Jackson, said: “As a mutual organisation owned by our members we believe that society really matters and that we can make a tangible difference in our local communities.
“This is something that we have been doing for over 150 years and I would like to thank all the Society’s colleagues and members who have contributed to this success through our varied charity and community work.”
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LAW firm Pinsent Masons has been recognised as a market leader in workplace gender equality in The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2016.
The unranked alphabetical list commends UK organisations that are leading the way in gender equality and diversity in the workplace by actively recruiting, retaining and progressing female talent.
The list is published in partnership with Business in the Community, the Prince of Wale’s Responsible Business Network, as part of the charity’s Responsible Business Week.
Sky, the firm’s gender balance initiative, was launched in 2013 and aims to remove the obstacles to female career progression and release the full potential of its workforce. The firm aims to ensure women will comprise at least 25% of the firm’s partnership by May 2018.
Richard Foley, senior partner at Pinsent Masons, says: “Our vision is to be recognised as a market leader in the global sectors in which we operate, differentiated by our approach to innovation. We see market leadership as being about more than simply being excellent lawyers, however.
“It’s about having a people strategy that allows talent within the firm to flourish – irrespective of gender and background – and innovating for and with our clients who face similar challenges. This ranking is a welcome validation of the work we have been doing to achieve that, albeit we recognise there is more we must do.”
