The most unusual development of last year, Rheged, a village buried in an old quarry, has won British Airways\' Tourism for Tomorrow Award for the built environment.

Rheged, described as the largest grass-covered development in Europe, consists of 8,500m[2] of education and leisure activities on five levels. It contains shops selling local produce (in particular) and an enormous cinema that plays its part in the National Mountaineering Exhibition housed there. A film of the story of Everest includes special effects like a temperature drop to -10∫C.

The whole development is outside Penrith in Cumbria and has been built into the disused Slapestone limestone quarry. The stone has been used extensively in the construction of Rheged. Inside the 10m high Pele Tower built from the stone disguises one of the centre\'s three lifts. Finer details have been finished in Burlington\'s Cumbrian slate.

In fact, the four Cumbrian-born men who conceived the project, all directors of Westmorland Motorway Services, made a conscious decision to use local companies, materials and skills as far as possible.

Grade II Listed limekilns have been carefully renovated and restored to form a central feature and the maion entrance has been designed to resemble the kilns.

Daylight enters the centre through seven glass atriums and two large windows, but the development looks from the nearby roads like a Lakeland hill and leaves views of Helvellyn Cumbria\'s second highest mountain, unobstructed.

The £18million project was not sponsored by the Millennium Commission, although it did receive backing from English Partners, the European Regional Development Fund, North West Regional Development Agency and Cumbria County Council.

The judges of the Tourism for Tomorrow Award said they were particularly impressed with the way the development merged into the landscape while still being next to the M6 so it would open the eyes of tourists to the county of Cumbria and the North Penines and not just tourism hotspots.

The British Airways-sponsored Tourism for Tomorrow Awards are internationally recognised as the most prestigious awards for sustainable tourism. They attracted 115 entries from 45 countries.

The architects of Rheged (the name is that of Cumbria\'s Celtic Kingdom) were Unwin Jones Architetcs, Carlisle.