The winners of the 2014 RIBA President’s Medals were announced this evening (Wednesday 3 December) at a ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in central London. The prestigious RIBA President’s Medals, which date back to 1836, reward talent and excellence in the study of architecture, and this year invited nominations from 317 schools of architecture located in 61 countries, the highest number ever in the history of the awards.
Nick Elias, from the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London) received the highest design prize of the evening, the RIBA Silver Medal (awarded to the best design project at Part 2 – Diploma/Masters level) for ‘PoohTown’.
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 was tutored by CJ Lim and Bernd Felsinger.
Simon Dean, tutored by Jane Houghton and Stephen Baty at Kingston University, was awarded the Bronze Medal (for best design project at Part 1 – degree level) for ‘Flow, 1944’.
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.
Jasper Ludewig was awarded the Dissertation Medal for ‘Made Ground: A spatial history of Sydney Park’. Produced under the supervision of Ross Anderson and submitted by the University of Sydney, the dissertation focusses on Sydney Park as a case study of ‘Spatial History’, a method of historical inquiry developed by Australian geographer, historian and architectural theorist, Paul Carter.
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.
RIBA President Stephen Hodder said “Congratulations to the winners of this year’s RIBA President’s Medals whose 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.
“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.”
Other student awards presented at this evening’s ceremony were:
Silver Medal High Commendation:
- Justin Cawley from the University of Sydney for ‘An Ark for Endangered Atmospheres’
Silver Medal Commendations:
- Yannis Halkiopoulos from the University of Westminster for ‘Brooklyn Co-operative’
- Louis Sullivan from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘The Living Dam’
Bronze Medal Commendations:
- Samuel Little from London Metropolitan University for ‘City Frame: The reappropriation of Maple House’
- Emily Priest from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘Rong Xhan Safehouse’
- Ho Yeung (Howell) Tsang from the University of Hong Kong for ‘Urban Living Transition: Vanishing heritage of Hong Kong residence’
Dissertation Medal High Commendation:
- Ekaterina Tikhoniouk from University College Dublin for ‘Towards a Common Ground for Play: Examining the history of play and playgrounds in Dublin’s Liberties’
Dissertation Medal Commendation:
- Leon Fenster from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘Exilic Landscapes: Synagogues and Jewish architectural identity in 1870s Britain’
Serjeant Awards for Excellence in Drawing
- Part 1: Oliver Riviere from the University of Brighton for ‘The Institute of Concrete Poetry’
- Part 2: Adam Bell for the University of Greenwich for ‘The Restored Commonwealth Club’
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.
SOM Foundation Fellowship Part 1:
- Kent Gin from the University of East London for ‘Cultural Perforation of Madrid, Disruption of the Defined’
SOM Foundation Fellowship Part 2:
- Mike Lim from the Royal College of Art, for ‘Untitled, 2014. Mixed Media’
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, 66 Portland Place W1 on 4 December 2014 and runs until the 31 January 2015.
http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/December2014/TheRIBAPresidentsMedalsStudentAwards.aspx
ENDS
Notes to editors
- For further press information contact Howard Crosskey in the RIBA Press Office: 020 7307 3761 howard.crosskey@riba.org
- To download supportive images from this year’s winners visit: https://riba.box.com/s/8uxph82tarxrefgfuom5
- A full list of this year’s entries can be found at http://www.presidentsmedals.com/, the awards website, which also holds an archive of images and dissertation synopses from nominated projects and dissertations since 1998
- This year’s judging panels included:
Bronze Medal / Part 1 Design Projects:
Chair: David Gloster, RIBA Director of Education
Roz Barr, Roz Barr Architects and 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
Silver Medal / Part 2 Design Projects:
Chair: David Gloster, RIBA Director of Education
Roz Barr, Roz Barr Architects and 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
Dissertation Panel (Dissertation Medal):
Chair: Dr Alexandra Stara (Associate Professor and Reader in the History and Theory of Architecture at Kingston University London)
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)
SOM Foundation UK Fellowships:
Kent Jackson – SOM Design Director
Andrew Phillips – Andrew Phillips Architects
Patrik Schumacher – Zaha Hadid Architects
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Medals Student Awards are the most prestigious awards in architectural education in the world. First awarded in 1836 as the RIBA Silver Medal for an architectural essay (and awarded from 1855 to ‘Measured Drawings’ produced by a talented graduate), this is the RIBA’s oldest award programme (preceding the Royal Gold Medal, which was established in 1848). In 1984, the Bronze Medal was introduced to reward a Part 1 student while the Silver Medal was awarded to a Part 2 student. In 2001, the first Dissertation Medal was awarded. Since its early days, the aim of the awards has been to promote excellence in the study of architecture, to reward talent and to encourage architectural debate worldwide.
Posted on Wednesday 3rd December 2014
