MRG Consulting Engineers has taken Building of the Year in the Educational Under 10M category at the Building and Architect of the Year Awards 2026, earning recognition for a project that demonstrates how conservation-led thinking and contemporary educational design can work in genuine harmony rather than in tension.

The Sacred Heart University Dingle Campus Redevelopment impressed the judges as a standout entry in a competitive category. The panel highlighted it as "a standout conservation-led redevelopment, successfully balancing heritage preservation with contemporary educational needs," a verdict that reflects the precision and sensitivity brought to a project where the brief demanded respect for the existing fabric as much as ambition for what it could become. That dual obligation is among the most demanding in architecture, and MRG Consulting Engineers has navigated it with confidence.

The handling of materials is central to the scheme's success. Rather than imposing a contemporary language onto the existing structure, the project engages carefully with what is already there, making deliberate and considered choices about where new elements meet old. The result is a building in which the connections between heritage fabric and new intervention feel natural and resolved, never forced or apologetic. That quality of material sensitivity is difficult to achieve and immediately apparent when it is.

What the project ultimately delivers is an educational environment with a genuine sense of place and history. By breathing new life into an existing building rather than replacing it, MRG Consulting Engineers has produced a campus that gives students and staff a learning environment rooted in its community and its landscape, qualities that no new-build on a greenfield site could replicate. In a category defined by the challenge of doing more with less, this is a deserving and clear-sighted winner.

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