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