When it opened 30 years ago, the Queen’s Building at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) was a trailblazer in green design – and this week its sustainability credentials were on full display as DMU hosted its first Annual Leicester Dinner.
The event celebrated the people, organisations and communities across Leicester with whom DMU works. Inspired by the building’s green history, it had a sustainability theme and showcased university research, partnerships and work being done across the city as well as highlighting DMU’s place as a civic institution.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Katie Normington, who opened the event, said: “Place is a core value we hold at DMU, not only in the geographical sense but place as a culture, working together to achieve positive outcomes for our communities, our economy and our students.
“The annual dinner was a wonderful opportunity to recognise and celebrate this with our partners, and showcase our sustainability research being done in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media and across the university.”
Special guest on the night was Professor Alan Short, architect who helped design Queen’s, which was the largest naturally ventilated building in Europe, and keynote speaker was Maggie Philbin, known to millions of viewers as the host of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World in the 1980s.
Professor Short, now Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University, said: “Before this building, people thought they knew how the air moved around inside buildings, and they were wrong.
“It was one of the first big projects I worked on. DMU were fantastic clients and the brief was to really establish engineering at De Montfort. The idea of sustainable engineering was so new at the time, nothing like this had been done.
“Before this, engineering buildings were huge sealed boxes surrounded by offices. I still give lectures about this building today.
“It was a fantastic time – we were all very young, and in DMU we had clients who were completely committed to delivering an innovative building. Building regulations changed because of Queens Building – we showed it was possible to naturally ventilate a building of this size. We were able to design buildings around the world, adapting the design in Leicester to different climates.”
Guests could find out more about DMU’s sustainability research by accessing QR codes that linked to web pages about projects including biofuel for agriculture, environmentally-friendly prosthetics made from plastic bottles and helping students cut their carbon footprints in university halls of accommodation around the UK.
Keynote speaker was Maggie Philbin, who presented BBC’s Tomorrow’s World science programme throughout the 1980s. During her speech she showed a clip of recording a piece introducing virtual reality headsets to the nation, filmed at DMU when it was Leicester Polytechnic.
Maggie – who was awarded an honorary doctorate by DMU in 2012 - now encourages young people to explore careers in science and technology through Teen Tech, a not for profit organisation which hosts events around the country to inspired school children.
Maggie said: “Everything I do now is to help young people understand the very real opportunities that are out there. What has always been good about this university is the way that the courses are so sophisticated and aligned to what is going to be needed now and in the future. It is lovely to be back. DMU was actually the first university to give me an honorary degree.”
The annual dinner involved staff across the university. Caterers Chartwells provided catering containers to act as plant pots for herb centrepieces, while pallets from deliveries were used to create signs. The herbs will be planted into the Trinity Herb Garden and the menu was focused on local produce.
Performance and events team Stuart Lambert and David Hughes designed lighting which projected a forest theme inside the building.
Posted on Monday 25 September 2023