2022 President’s Medal and Awards for Research News, Royal Institute of British Architects Prize, England, UK

2022 President’s Medal and Awards for Research Winners

2023 President’s Medal and Awards for Research

7 + 6 December 2022

RIBA reveals winners of 186th President’s Medals

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is pleased to announce the winners of its annual awards for the world’s best student architecture projects, the 2022 President’s Medals, now in its 186^th year.

The RIBA Silver Medal for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 2 or equivalent, is awarded to Annabelle Tan at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality.

A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality is an investigation into notions of ‘tropicality’ in the context of Singapore. Spanning 4.2 km, Annabelle’s scheme is a socio-ecological continuum linking a threatened forest to a national nature reserve. It includes housing, educational spaces, and areas for civic engagement made from regenerative materials produced along the site.

Commendations in the RIBA Silver Medal category:

Nadir Qazim Mahmood (Manchester School of Architecture) for Nirvana

Dario Biscaro (Royal College of Art) for Spolia Tectonic
Oliver Reynolds (London Metropolitan University) for A Campus for Flour: Between Horizontal and Vertical

Left: ‘A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality’ (RIBA Silver Medal Winner) – Annabelle Tan. Right: ‘Out of the Closet, Into the Garden’ (Bronze Medal Winner) – Mary Holmes.

The RIBA Bronze Medal (for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 1 or equivalent) goes to Mary Holmes (University of Cambridge) for Out of the Closet, Into the Garden.

Mary proposes the queering and retrofitting of two rows of terraced houses in the heart of a suburb in Harlow. In this context, mutual support and collectivity are centred to create an enduring queer space.

The judging panel of the RIBA Bronze Medal awarded a High Commendation to Common Ground | Leith by Inka Eismar (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) and Commendations to:

Chon Kei Lam (University of Melbourne) for Symbiosis
Felix Wilson (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) for A Scarcity of Attention // Plans for 111-115 Constitution Street

The RIBA Dissertation Medal is also awarded to Annabelle Tan (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) for Past, Present and Post-Tropicality: Viewing Singapore through an ‘Infra(-)structural’ Field.

Commendations in the RIBA Dissertation Medal category go to:

Mohsin Ali (Manchester School of Architecture) for Mapping Migrant Trajectories: A Study of South Asians in Diaspora through the Bradford High Street
Thomas Faulkner (Architectural Association) for The Art of Getting By: From Domestic Abuse to Social Housing

Kieran Ka Ming Tam (University of Cambridge) for Beyond Humanitarianism: From States of Violence to Futures of Care in Northern France

Recognising the importance of climate action in the development of architectural design proposals, the RIBA has awarded the RIBA Awards for Sustainable Design for the fourth year. At Part 1, the award went to Inka Eismar (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) for Common Ground | Leith. At Part 2, it went to Annabelle Tan (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) for A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality.

The Serjeant Awards for Excellence in Drawing have been awarded to Nathan Tipping-Stevenson (Falmouth University) for Leow Keskorra ha Dyski: A Place to Assemble and Learn at Part 1, and Nadir Qazim Mahmood (Manchester School of Architecture) for Nirvana at Part 2.

Starting from top row, left to right: Mohsin Ali, Dario Biscaro, Inka Eismar, Thomas Faulkner, Mary Holmes, Kieran Ka Ming Tam, Chon Kei Lam, Nadir Qazim Mahmood, Oliver Reynolds, Annabelle Tan, Nathan Tipping-Stevenson, Felix Wilson.

RIBA President Simon Allford said:

“This year’s RIBA President’s Medals celebrate the talent and work of architecture students from around the world. The record number of entries this year address contemporary topics with immense social and environmental significance. As ever the range, scope and scale of their inquiry is extremely impressive.

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to the tutors and schools of architecture who have fostered and encouraged such promising minds. I look forward to seeing how they develop these speculations on architecture and life in the years to come.

We have been running these awards for many decades and opened them up to the wider world of non-validated schools when I was VP for education over a decade ago. As well as being a celebration of this year’s student preoccupations, the work now adds to our quite extraordinary archive of a long history of student inquiry.

On a personal note, I fondly remember awaiting the result of our Silver Medal nominated project with my partners at AHMM over 30 years ago – we were unplaced but of course we consoled ourselves with the fact we were involved!”

President’s Medal and Awards for Research

The RIBA President’s Medals were established in 1836 and are the RIBA’s oldest awards. presidentsmedals.com features all nominations made since 1998. The site includes a comprehensive visual archive of tens of thousands of images and statements produced by students, as well as photographs and films of the judging of entries, the awards ceremonies, and interviews with the winners.

In 2022 the RIBA President’s Medals had the highest ever number of entries in their 186-year-old history: 347 entries nominated by 100 schools of architecture located in 27 countries.

This year’s judging panels included:

Silver Medal

Chair: Tracy Meller – Sr Partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners; Honorary Prof of Architecture at University of Nottingham, UK

Anupama Kundoo – Founding Director of Anupama Kundoo architects (with studios in Berlin, Germany, and Pune and Pondicherry, India); Professor of Architecture at the Potsdam School of Architecture, Germany; and Head of Urban Design at Auroville, India
Nicholas Lobo Brennan – Co-founder of Apparata Architects; Associate Professor of Tectonics at Kingston University, UK
Thandi Loewenson – Architectural Designer and Researcher; Tutor of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, UK

Ken Okonkwo – Associate Director at Haworth Tompkins architects; visiting Architecture Critic at the University of Sheffield, UK
Sofie Pelsmakers – Environmental Architect, Educator and Researcher; Associate Professor at the Faculty of Built Environment of Tampere University, Finland, and Visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, UK

Bronze Medal

Chair: Tracy Meller – Sr Partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners; Honorary Prof of Architecture at the University of Nottingham
Victoria Farrow – Practising Architect; Course Leader for the BA Architecture at Birmingham City University
Adam Nathaniel Furman – Artist and Designer; trained as an Architect

Smith Mordak – Director of Sustainability and Physics at Buro Happold; Practising Architect, Engineer, Writer, and Curator
Stephen Slaughter – Practising Architect; Chair of Undergraduate Architecture at Pratt Institute in New York, USA
Ramsey Yassa – Practising Architect; Founding Director at NOOMA Studio

Dissertation Medal

Chair: Lesley Lokko – Founder & Director of the African Futures Institute in Accra, Ghana
Thomas Aquilina – London-based architect and academic

Kuukuwa Manful – PhD candidate at SOAS University of London
Samir Pandya – Assistant Head of the School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster
Tanja Poppelreuter – Lecturer in History and Theory of Architecture and Director of Postgrad Research Studies at the University of Salford

Huda Tayob – Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester

2022 President’s Medal and Awards for Research information / images received 061222

Previously on e-architect

9 Dec 2022

RIBA Award For Falmouth University Graduate

image courtesy of Nathan Tipping-Stevenson

RIBA Serjeant Award for Excellence in Architectural Drawing

Falmouth Graduate Nathan Tipping-Stevenson has been named as a recipient of one of the RIBA’s prestigious President’s Medals – winning a Serjeant Award for Excellence in Architectural Drawing. The Royal Institute of British Architects announced the winners of the 2022 President’s Medals during its annual awards for the world’s best architecture student projects.

25 Jan 2022

RIBA announces winners of 2021 President’s Medal and Awards for Research

Highway House, Wooden House © John Lin

Tuesday 25 January 2022 – The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the winners of the 2021 President’s Medal and Awards for Research, celebrating the best research in the fields of architecture and the built environment.

2021 President’s Medal and Awards for Research

The 2021 President’s Medal for Research has been awarded to John Lin and Sony Devabhaktuni from the University of Hong Kong for their project As Found Houses, which explores experiments from self-builders in rural China.

Three projects have also been given President’s Awards for Research in the categories of Education, Cities and Community and History and Theory; and a project exploring the significance of storage design within the home has been commended.

The three award-winning projects are:

Education (2021 annual theme):

Will I Cause Harm?: Practising Ethics Guides for Built Environment Research

by Dr David Roberts, Prof Jane Rendell & Dr Yael Padan from the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL; and Ariana Markowitz & Dr Emmanuel Osuteye from the Bartlett Development Planning Unit at UCL.

Cities and Community:

As Found Houses: Experiments from Self-builders in Rural China

by John Lin & Sony Devabhaktuni from the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

History and Theory:

Beyond the National Art Schools: Thin-Tile Vaulting in Cuba after the Revolution

by Mohammad Wesam Al Asali & Dr Michael H. Ramage from the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge; and Dania González Couret from the Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana, José Antonio Echeverría, Cuba.

Design and Technical Commendation

A commendation has been awarded to Professor Elena Marco at the University of The West of England for Stuff and Space in the Home: Space for Storage as the forgotten design and well-being dimension in standardised housing, which was submitted for consideration in the Design and Technical category.

RIBA President’s Medals

RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2021 Winners

image courtesy of RIBA
RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2021

RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2020 Winners
RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2020 Silver Medal winner Robert Beeny, University of Westminster, for Devil’s Valley Geothermal Co-operative:

photo courtesy of RIBA
RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2020

RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2018 Winners
RIBA Silver Medal winner Sonia Magdziarz, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL:

photo courtesy of RIBA
RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards 2018