Pine Lake Camp Centre for a charity organisation Foundation Matters was awarded "Best Educational Building" at 2016 LABC East Midlands Awards and was also a finalist in the "Best Inclusive Building" category. The story of this project, however, starts in 2010, when DIZ were first approached to convert what was an essentially a prefabricated log cabin from a Canadian manufacturer into a multi-purpose public building, containing both a hotel and educational facilities. The enormous challenge on this project was to make the building comply with British standards and building regulations, which was especially difficult in terms of fire safety, thermal performance and disabled access. The prefabricated construction was placed on top of a semi-submersed lower ground level, which contained majority of the bedrooms.
The project also included a smaller pre-fabricated building to the north-west of the main facility, mainly used as staff accommodation and additional games space, and ancillary cottages/ plan room to the north of the site. As the build was funded entirely by donations, it was executed in several stages over the period of 5 years.
