RIBA Gordon Ricketts Fund
The RIBA Gordon Ricketts Fund was launched in 1968, in memory of Gordon Ricketts, Secretary of the RIBA from 1959 until his death in 1968. It is offered biennially to provide grants for RIBA staff to pursue research in a personal field of interest related to architecture.
Past and present members of staff at the RIBA can apply for up to £2,000 to fund their chosen research projects.
The next application cycle will open in the Spring of 2026.
To apply, candidates will need to complete an online application form (full details and guidance notes will be provided). Current RIBA employees will need to ask their Line Manager to complete the Line Manager Approval Form and email it separately to research.funding@riba.org.
If you have any questions about the application process or would like to discuss a project proposal, please get in touch at research.funding@riba.org.
2024 recipients
In the 2024 application cycle, we were able to award a total of £2,600 to support two projects:
Pete Collard
On the road from Wausau to Kalamozoo: designing schools in post-war Britain
My project will explore links between post-war British and American schools architecture by partially retracing a journey taken by architects Mary and David Medd across the USA in 1958. The Medds visited 100s of newly built education facilities on behalf of the Ministry of Education and produced a report upon their return home that presented new ideas and innovations for architects working on Britain’s post-war school building programme. The intention is to retrace a small section of their journey, from Illinois to Michigan via the farmlands of Wisconsin, visiting as many of the same schools as is feasible, and to make connections with educational buildings subsequently built in the UK that were influenced by the Medd’s trip.
The project seeks to demonstrate the importance of the road trip to architectural practice and study, showing how generations of architects have sought inspiration through travel, looking to understand first-hand how buildings work, rather than how they look on the page, and studying them within the context of the society that built them.
Joni Tyler
The interwar pub in London: architecture, designers, women
Pubs were and are essential gathering places for every community and today 28,000 pubs are in the UK. They are one of the factors making up great places and are too often ignored in architectural history and discussion of community and social change. I want to do something about this and bring to attention my favourite era of pub design, the interwar era (1918 - 1939). The design of these pubs was a deliberate attempt to woo women drinkers for the first time. There are examples that are perfect art deco shrines (The Duke in Bloomsbury), and on the other hand cosy Brewery Tudor such as the Red Lion in Kennington. I will be looking at design, brewery livery, pub architects, and women as a new class of pub habitués. This will be in the form of an Instagram account.
Previous recipients
2022
Paddy Gould - The Architectural Plan in Domestic Dreamspace
Rodrigo Orrantia Gomez - Global Explorers: Architecture and the Dawn of Modernity through the Lens of Early Photography 1839-1900
2020
Matthew Dowell - Dreamland: The Development of the British Seaside in the Twentieth Century
Kate Hunter - An Exploration of Spatial Design in Virtual Environments within Online Immersive Events
Liam Peacock - Architecture of Maintenance and Mobility
Chloe Spiby Loh - Orientalism as Othering
Read the report submitted to RIBA by Chloe Spiby Loh at the end of 2020 project (PDF).
2018
Jonathan Baker - The Old in the New: Comparing the Symbolic Use of Spolia and Reclaimed Materials in Late Antique and Contemporary Architecture
Paul Overend - LGBTQ Spaces and Places: A Look at the Architectural History of the Vernacular
Wilson Yau - A Legacy in Paper and Stone: How the Architecture, Culture and Urban Planning of Cities from Liverpool to Shanghai Were Shaped by the British Empire and its Architects
Read more about Wilson's project.
2016
Thomas Mills - Portrait of an Industry: Scotch Whisky Distilleries and their Communities
Michèle Woodger - Letter-Cutting in London: A Database of Hand-Carved Lettering in London
2014
Ruth Hynes - Industrial Heritage and Urban Place-Making: The Impact of Twentieth Century Industrial Architecture on Shaping Urban Space
Katherine Pelton - 50 Years Later: The Legacy of the New Towns Act (1946)
2012
Valeria Carullo - Rationalism on Set: Architecture, Cinema and Photography in 1930s Italy
Read the report submitted to RIBA by Valeria Carullo (PDF).
Rebecca Robert-Hughes - A Case Study of Chandigarh, to Examine the Influence of Georges Bataille's Theory of Transgression on the Work of Le Corbusier
Get in touch
If you would like to know more about any of the projects listed above, please get in touch.
