The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have announced the President’s Medals Student Awards at a special event today in London. The awards, recognised as the world’s most prestigious set of awards in architectural education, were inaugurated in 1836 (making them the institutes oldest award, including the RIBA Gold Medal). Three medals in particular – the Bronze for a Part I student, the Silver for a Part II student, and the Dissertation Medal – are awarded to “promote excellence in the study of architecture [and] to reward talent and to encourage architectural debate worldwide.” In addition to these, the winners of the Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing and the SOM Foundation Fellowships are also announced.
317 schools of architecture from over 61 countries were invited to nominate design projects and dissertations by their students. This year saw the majority of winners come from London schools, including the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), Kingston University, the University of Westminster, London Metropolitan University (the CASS), the Royal College of Art, the University of East London, and the University of Greenwich. University College Dublin (Ireland) and the University of Brighton (UK) also saw their students commended, alongside the University of Sydney (two students) and the University of Hong Kong (one student).
See drawings from all the winning and commended students after the break.
Stephen Hodder, President of the RIBA, congratulated the winners saying that their "talent and hard work remind us all of the important part that architecture plays in creating a better world and the key role performed by the architect in the process." He went on to say that "without a doubt, the projects deserve to be rewarded not only for their accomplished words, images and models, but also for revealing the intellectual and experiential dimension architecture brings to daily life."
RIBA Silver Medal Winners and Commendations
Silver Medal Winner: PoohTown / Nick Elias, Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL
While revisiting Slough and the industrial growth and social inequality the town experienced during the 1920s - the decade when A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories were first published and became popular for their accounts of a fictitious happy world - the project re-evaluates covert responses to socio-political exclusion. This is achieved by reinterpreting the underpinning state of contentment that typifies Milne’s protagonist in order to propose ‘happy’ architectures where residents can live, work and play together in a sustainable economic network. By doing so, PoohTown establishes the grounds for a subtle critique of today’s cities potential to prescribe policies of happiness alongside familiar amenities (a concept, in the author’s opinion, worryingly absent in current city planning) and alerts for the need to design for emotions as a way to find architecture’s purpose in a changing world.
Nick Elias was tutored by CJ Lim and Bernd Felsinger.
Silver Medal High Commendation: An Ark for Endangered Atmospheres / Justin Cawley, University of Sydney
Silver Medal Commendation: Brooklyn Co-operative / Yannis Halkiopoulos, University of Westminster
Silver Medal Commendation: The Living Dam / Louis Sullivan, Bartlett School of Architecture
The jury for the Silver Medal comprised of:
- David Gloster - RIBA Director of Education (chair)
- Roz Barr - Roz Barr Architects, RIBA Vice-President Education
- Odile Decq - Studio Odile Decq and Confluence: Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture
- Christopher Platt - Head and Professor of Architecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow
- Smiljan Radić - Architect and Designer of the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion
RIBA Bronze Medal Winners and Commendations
Bronze Medal Winner: Flow, 1944 / Simon Dean, Kingston University
On the surface, the project proposes a design for a bathhouse located on a quarry carved into the rock created by solidified lava that erupted from Mount Vesuvius in 1944. As it develops this idiosyncratic space of transience on a shunned landscape, Flow, 1944 highlights the importance of the notions of ephemerality and the passing of time in the formation of built environments as they are conceived by architects and inhabited by users, thus alerting for the role played by architecture in constructing historical layers of physical strata and collective meaning.
Simon Dean was tutored by Jane Houghton and Stephen Baty.
Bronze Medal Commendation: City Frame: The Reappropriation of Maple House / Samuel Little, London Metropolitan University
Bronze Medal Commendation: Rong Xhan Safehouse / Emily Priest, Bartlett School of Architecture
Bronze Medal Commendation: Urban Living Transition: Vanishing heritage of Hong Kong residence / Ho Yeung (Howell) Tsang, University of Hong Kong
The jury for the Bronze Medal comprised of:
- David Gloster - RIBA Director of Education (chair)
- Roz Barr - Roz Barr Architects, RIBA Vice-President Education
- Paolo Desideri - ABDR Architetti Associati and Professor of Architecture at University of Roma Tre, Italy
- Mary Duggan - Duggan Morris Architects
- Stephen Witherford - Witherford Watson Mann Architects
RIBA Dissertation Medal Winners and Commendations
Dissertation Medal Winner: Made Ground: A Spatial History of Sydney Park / Jasper Ludewig, University of Sydney
Each of Made Ground’s six essays discusses a series of practices, beliefs and tools in the historical production of Australia’s physical and social space to, ultimately, illustrate the postcolonial capacity of interpreting the texts and records of the past as a way of destabilising assumptions about Australia’s places of the present in which architects, planners, urban designers and artists intervene.
Produced under the supervision of Ross Anderson.
Dissertation Medal High Commendation: Towards a Common Ground for Play: Examining the history of play and playgrounds in Dublin’s Liberties / Ekaterina Tikhoniouk, University College Dublin
Dissertation Medal Commendation: Exilic Landscapes: Synagogues and Jewish architectural identity in 1870s Britain / Leon Fenster, Bartlett School of Architecture
The jury for the Dissertation Medal comprised of:
- Dr. Alexandra Stara - Associate Professor and Reader in the History and Theory of Architecture at Kingston University London (chair)
- Professor Peter Carl - Professor of Architecture and Leader of the PhD in Architecture at London Metropolitan University
- Professor Gordana Fontana-Giusti - Professor of Architecture and Director of the PhD Programme at the University of Kent
- Professor Florian Urban - Professor and Head of History of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art
Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing (Part One Student)
The Institute of Concrete Poetry / Oliver Riviere, University of Brighton
Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing (Part Two Student)
The Restored Commonwealth Club / Adam Bell, University of Greenwich
The UK office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) also awarded the SOM Foundation UK Fellowships selected from this year’s entries for the RIBA President’s Medals:
Cultural Perforation of Madrid, Disruption of the Defined / Kent Gin, University of East London
Untitled, 2014. Mixed Media / Mike Lim, Royal College of Art
2013 RIBA President's Medals Winners Announced
The 2014 President's Medals Student Architecture Awards Show, a free exhibition celebrating this year’s best student architecture and showcasing new ideas and from around the world opens to the public in the Practice Space, RIBA (at 66 Portland Place, London) on 4th December 2014 and runs until the 31st January 2015.
See every entry to this year's competition (plus archived projects) here.
