RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship

"As a student, I won a prize that allowed me to spend a summer travelling through Europe and to study first-hand buildings and cities that I knew only from the pages of books. It was a revelation – liberating and exhilarating in so many ways.

Today, it is the privilege of the Norman Foster Foundation to support the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship, which I hope will have a lasting legacy – offering the chance for discovery and the inspiration for exciting new work – for generations to come." Lord Norman Foster

The RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship offers one scholarship of £7,000 to a student of architecture to support international research on a topic and at locations of their choice.

The topic of the research should, however, relate to the sustainable survival of cities and fall under one of the following themes:

learning from the past to inform the future
the future of society
density of settlements
use of resources
quality of urban life
transport

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply, students must be enrolled in, and have successfully completed at least the first year of a professional qualification in architecture from a school invited by RIBA.

Please note that nominations for this scholarship are made by the schools of architecture invited (and countersigned by the head of school) and not directly by individual students, as we only accept one application per school.

If you wish to apply, we recommend that you contact your head of school and express your interest in being nominated. Find out the full list of invited schools.

How to apply

Applications will open spring 2025.

Please read the guidance notes (PDF) in full before submitting your online application. These guidance notes contain important details about the information you need to provide in the online form.

Access the online application form

You will need to follow the instructions to register for an account first, and then select the ‘RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship 2025’ form to begin your application for this award. You will receive an automatic email notification upon submission of your application.

If you have any issues with the online application form, please email student.funding@riba.org.

2024 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship recipient

normanfosterscholarshipthomaswarren2024700x800png — Thomas Warren (London Metropolitan University, UK), winner of the 2024 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship

RIBA and the Norman Foster Foundation are pleased to announce Thomas Warren, nominated by London Metropolitan University (UK), as the winner of the 2024 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship for his project ‘Africa 360°’.

Thomas intends to use the £7,000 travel scholarship to investigate how future off-grid cities can eliminate the time consuming, costly, and maintenance-heavy nature of city scale infrastructure – instead using self-sustaining energy, water, and food systems.

Thomas was inspired after observing how African cities had skipped fixed-line telecommunication infrastructure and gone straight to distributed mobile network towers, effectively leapfrogging technologies.

Africa’s young population, digitised education, solar energy, and abundant resources offer vast potential. Diverse landscapes, cultures, and contexts make for unique research locations for off-grid living and future cities.

Starting and ending in Cape Town, Thomas plans to travel to off-grid projects, communities, and initiatives to understand solutions for future off-grid sustainable cities. These locations include the Earthship Biotecture project in Malawi, the Fambidzanai Permaculture Research Institute in Zimbabwe, the Irente Biodiversity Reserve in Tanzania, the Kipepeo Village in Kenya, and the Enkanini informal settlement in South Africa.

Given the exceptional standard of applications this year, the jury also commended three other entries:

Henrick Michael (University of New South Wales, Australia), for ‘Urban Biomimetics’
Qianqian Ma (Royal College of Art, UK), for ‘Finding the Eel & Flounder: A Project to Witness Tuvalu’s Retaliation Against Rising Sea Levels’
Santiago Fernandez Perez (European University of Madrid, Spain), for ‘Deserted Horizons: The Silent Crisis of Rural Europe’

​RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship

Eligibility

How to apply

2024 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship recipient

Previous RIBA Norman Foster Scholars:

RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship