AJ Student Prize | School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape

The Architect Journal has revelaed the nominations for this year's AJ Student Prize, having received entries from every RIBA and ARB-accredited school in the UK.

The AJ Student Prize celebrates the amazing talent of students completing undergraduate and postgraduate architecture courses across the country, despite the many challenges they have faced due to the pandemic.

The entries are submitted by tutors from RIBA and ARB-accredited architecture schools across the UK and include the student’s own description of their project and a citation from their tutor.

Prizes will be awarded in three categories: undergraduate, postgraduate and the special Sustainability Award category, which highlights the innovation and understanding students are showing in response to pressing social and environmental issues.

For the Sustainability Award, there were a record number of entries, with 41 schools submitting, making us very proud that our Stage 6 graduate Wing Yung Janet Tam has been announced as one of the 10 shortlisted projects in this category.

Undergraduate Nominee - Luca Philo

The Centre for Building Excellence and Retrofit Empowerment

Project description Embedded in its context of the existing Forum Shopping Centre in Wallsend, the proposed Centre for Building Expertise and Retrofit Excellence addresses the need for a renewed civic forum in Wallsend. It aims to do this by providing spaces, expertise, and the collaborative environment necessary to foster new communities of practice in DIY, retrofit and sustainable making. The intervention fuses the civic-facing functions that are vital to social and economic growth in the region with a specialist focus on the improvement of housing. Through a dedicated, on-site centre of construction expertise, the building can act as a demonstration of best practice in sustainable building techniques in the region. Wallsend Forum can then adapt and grow over time as the functions and requirements of the civic building change with the community, environment and technology.

Tutor citation Luca’s project demonstrates a radical and original retrofit strategy for a regional shopping centre in Wallsend. Luca has developed a clear and rigorous ethical position as designer, building from a strong foundation of research on advocacy and resilient civic architecture, as well as through technical understanding of retrofit strategies. Luke Rigg, Sophie Baldwin and Kieran Connolly

Postgraduate Nominee - Zara Rawson

Newcastle Urban Room

Project description The scheme is an urban room that seeks to engage local people with their built environment. Looking back to Newcastle’s history of redevelopment during the 1970s, particularly the construction of Eldon Square shopping centre, the scheme sees the city as a random collection of architectural salvage. Its presence has informed the use of spolia as a tool, allowing people in the city to become more active in its development. The urban room sits on the site of the old town hall, a place where many demonstrations were once held. Rather than replicating it, the project re-uses as much of the existing structure as possible to reinstate this lost civic realm. Growing from individual pieces of architectural salvage taken from buildings demolished in Newcastle over the past 10 years, the project becomes embedded in its urban context and provides a place for creating, debating, and engaging.

Tutor citation Zara’s response has taken the idea of architectural spolia – the reclamation of old stonework for new construction – and has created an analysis of Newcastle through its materials and historic street patterns to reframe the worth of its materials and built heritage. The analysis of spolia becomes part of a process of engagement and participation with the built environment, raising questions about the development of our cities through its materiality. Daniel Burn, Graham Farmer, Jane Redmond and Paul Rigby

Sustainability Award Shortlist

Re-establishing Bamboo in the Industrial Era - Wing Jung Janet Tam

Bamboo is a zero-waste material, good carbon capturer and decomposes naturally at the end of its life. Despite efforts made to fit bamboo into current construction industries by developing it into engineered bamboo products, it is still considered just an alternative to timber. Often it is difficult to identify the overly-processed final material as bamboo because it is so far removed from its original form. Each material deserves its own design, tailored to its properties. Therefore, this project aims to change people’s perception by offering a new tactile experience, while reintroducing this traditional material. Looking at bamboo’s current supply logistics, transportation accounts for the main contribution to its carbon footprint. So the principal challenge is to use living bamboo plants – growing the material on-site, without harvesting. The project proposes a series of interventions and structures that are grown and used according to bamboo’s natural growth cycle of 30 years.