Member Article

Students urge MPs to relocate to North East

A proposal to relocate the Houses of Parliament to the outskirts of Chester-le-Street has made it to the finals of a national competition.

Students from Joseph Swan School in Gateshead designed the new building as part of a Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA) competition, which invited pupils from across the UK to create a Parliament for the Future.

The students’ design has now been shortlisted from hundreds of entries, and will be displayed in the Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament from 7-17 July.

The ‘Palace for Northern Democracy’ is a dome-shaped structure which uses renewable energy and green options such as self-sufficient farms and orchards to create a new home for MPs.

The five students - all aged between 14 and 15 - worked with professional architect mentors and conducted exhaustive research to develop the design.

On 7 July, the team will travel to London to find out if they have won the top prize at a special award ceremony at Westminster Hall.

George Hodgson, teacher at Joseph Swan and project leader, said: “I am incredibly proud of my students. They have worked extremely hard to get this far in the competition and have put in dozens of extra hours to make the design both realistic and imaginative. We are now keeping our fingers crossed for 7 July.”

RIBA competition judges said: “The jury was impressed with Joseph Swan’s imaginative approach to relocating the new national Parliament to a new home on the outskirts of Chester-le-Street as a home for Northern Democracy. The iconic structure and demonstration of design quality were exemplary.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .