19 May 2025 – The Entopia Building has added another four accolades to its trophy cabinet, winning at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) East Awards and the British Council for Offices (BCO) Awards ceremonies.
At the RIBA East Awards on Thursday, Entopia’s architects, Wendy Bishop and Mark Martines, collected three prizes:
- 2025 RIBA East Award
- 2025 RIBA East Project Architect of the Year Mark Martines and Wendy Bishop
- 2025 RIBA East Sustainability Award.
The RIBA jury said: “[Entopia’s] energy use is astonishingly low. Acoustic surfaces and triple glazing mean that any noise from the buses and cars on the street outside is totally silenced. Altogether, the scheme asks us to choose what we really want when it comes to retrofitting a building: a coherent new aesthetic appearance, or else the best possible environmental principles and performance? The University of Cambridge regards Entopia as its standard-bearer for a more sustainable estates policy.”
Read the full RIBA citation which explains why Entopia is so impressive. RIBA regional award winners will be considered for a RIBA National Award in recognition of their architectural excellence.
Last week the Entopia Building also won at the BCO Awards for the Midlands and Central England, with the Entopia project team winning the Refurbished/Recycled Workplace award. The BCO judges praised the Entopia project team for taking a new approach to refurbishment that raises industry standards.
These awards follow on from two awards won at the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) awards ceremony, where Entopia won the Building Performance Champion award and was also named the Project of the Year in the Retrofit Workplaces category.
Anna Nitch-Smith, CISL’s Chief Operating Officer, said: "We’re delighted that the Entopia Building has been recognised at the Regional BCO awards, which celebrate both visual excellence and environmental performance. Picking up the refurbished and recycled workplace award, Entopia has shown what’s truly possible in terms of applying circularity principles and creating a transformative workspace. We now invite industry bodies, commercial developers and occupiers to join our Entopia Living Lab to co-develop, pilot and scale new circular office solutions which can take Entopia – and wider built environment – to the next level of sustainability performance."
From humble beginnings to world-leading efficiency
The Entopia Building started life as a telephone exchange built in the 1930s. It was sustainably retrofitted before CISL moved in in 2022. The updated building achieved a 35 per cent reduction in heat loss and uses only 15 per cent of the energy requirements of the original building. A total of 62,332kg CO2e in construction materials were avoided, and now the Entopia Building meets ambitious environmental standards, including EnerPHit Classic, WELL Gold, and BREEAM Outstanding – making it the first of its kind globally.
Living Lab
CISL's vision is for Entopia to become a Living Lab for sustainability innovation, where innovators, academics and pioneering companies in the built environment can come together to pilot and test new interventions in the design, operation and use of lived spaces – and to communicate and share the results for public benefit.