Sarah Khan wins Gus Astley prize from Institute of Historic Building Conservation

AA alumna Sarah Khan has won the Institute of Historic Building Conservation Gus Astley prize for her essay titled ‘The Ghost in the Machine: Occupants’ influence on the Environmental Performance in a Grade I Listed Building’. The prize was awarded by Director General of Historic Houses Ben Cowell, who described the project as ‘completely absorbing and fascinating, and genuinely useful’.

Khan commented: ‘As a conservation architect, it has been a constant struggle to find ways to rise up to meet the climate emergency challenge. I found it increasingly frustrating to hear old buildings being compared to energy-hungry vintage cars – there to be looked at, but not used. It was a great joy to discover the plethora of archival information about the different ways in which buildings were managed in the past, and how re-introducing them could be simple, but an extremely effective way forward.’

Read more about the prize