The RIBA President’s Awards for Research celebrate the best research in the fields of architecture and the built environment.
Alongside the three fixed categories, this year's annual theme was Education; inviting researchers examining the changing face of architectural education, particularly in line with the RIBA's educational themes and values, to submit their work.
Panel Chair: Professor Tim Sharpe
Head of the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde
Professor Tim Sharpe has both practice and research expertise in low energy and sustainable architecture. He was previously Director of the Mackintosh Environmental Architecture Research Unit and is now Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde.
Professor Sharpe was a member of the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Public Health Advisory Committee on Indoor Air Quality, and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Working Group on IAQ and children’s health.
He is currently a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, Environment and Modelling Group. He has led on several projects for the Scottish Government Building Standards Division. He is also Chair of the NHBC Scotland Technical Standards group and a member of the NHBC Construction Quality Expert Panel.
Judge: Julia Roberts
Partner, Education and Research Sector Lead, Hawkins\Brown
Julia Roberts is a Partner and Education and Research Sector Lead at Hawkins\Brown. She has led high profile, award-winning projects for clients including the Royal College of Surgeons, Cardiff University, University of Hong Kong and Royal Veterinary College.
Roberts currently leads the development of Hawkins\Brown’s first net zero whole life carbon education building for Nottingham Trent University, working closely with in-house sustainability advisors to optimise the design.
She is also a member of the Higher Education Design Quality Forum (HEDQF) and Designers for Science; she has contributed to and spoken at education and lab conferences in Europe and the US.
Judge: Fran Bradshaw
Partner, Anne Thorne Architects
Frances Bradshaw has been a partner at Anne Thorne Architects since 1995. There she has focussed on how women’s lives shape and are shaped by buildings and the city, on participatory design, on large scale regeneration as well as smaller community projects, on low energy and ecological building design including the Passivhaus standard.
She studied architecture and trained as a bricklayer. In 1980 she was a founder member of Matrix, the feminist design collective, worked on various feminist and community projects, then for a local authority direct labour organisation as a bricklayer, and in construction at Collective Building Design. She was a joint author and editor of Making Space - Women and the Man Made Environment, 1984 (reprint Versodue 2022).
Bradshaw has been a Trustee of the Association for Environment Conscious Building since 2012.
Judge: Dr Deljana Iossifova
Associate Professor of Urban Studies, University of Manchester
Dr Deljana Iossifova is Chair of the Board of the Urban Studies Foundation and the principal investigator and international lead on a diverse £1.3 million portfolio of transdisciplinary research around urban transformation and urban infrastructural transitions. Her work has been funded by NERC, ESRC, Royal Society and the Daiwa Foundation, among others.
Geographically, Dr Iossifova's main research focus is on the Global East and South, including China, Japan, Bulgaria, India and Brazil. Trained as an architect at ETH Zurich, she practiced in Germany, China, Japan and the USA. Deljana is the author of Translocal Ageing in the Global East (Palgrave, 2020) and lead editor of Urban Infrastructuring (Springer Nature, 2022) and Defining the Urban (Routledge, 2018).
Judge: Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows
Architect, design researcher and lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and architectural design tutor at the London School of Architecture
Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows is an architect, design researcher, lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture and an architectural design tutor at the London School of Architecture and the Central Saint Martins. She is the founder of FAME collective, co-founder of Our Building Design and the charity Mannan Foundation Trust.
Tumpa is a PhD candidate, exploring design-based research on architectural responses to the confluence of changing monsoon in Bangladesh. Tumpa utilises design practice to be an active agent of socio-spatial decolonisation of climate responsive design, for environmental, climate and spatial justice. Tumpa is a panel member of the Design Review Panel for the Southwark Council Planning Department. She was named a RIBAJ Rising Star (2017), she has been awarded the RIBA President's Award for Research 2019 (commendation), a RIBA BAME award winner (2019), SEED/PacificRim Award (2018) and Architecture Sans Frontiers Award (2017).
Judge: Professor Adam Sharr
Professor of Architecture, Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University
Adam Sharr is Professor of Architecture at the department of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University. He is Editor in Chief of arq: Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press) and Series Editor of Thinkers for Architects (Routledge). He practises with Design Office, listed in the AJ’s 2020 40 Under 40 listing of the UK’s ‘most exciting emerging architectural talent’. His most recent book is Modern Architecture: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press), and Creative Practice Research in Architecture, co-edited with Ashley Mason, will be published by Routledge later this year.
Judge: Dr Susie West
Senior Lecturer in Art History and Heritage, Open University
Dr Susie West is an architectural historian at The Open University, and is finishing four years as the Education Officer for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB). During this period, she has championed a new engagement with equality, diversity and inclusion in the SAHGB’s mission. Before joining The Open University, she worked for English Heritage as a Senior Properties Historian, caring for the portfolio of 411 historic buildings and communicating their value to visitors.
Dr West's research interests centre on the English country house, and the library room within, as well as heritage issues for the built environment. Her early training was in archaeology, which continues to inform her interests in how people and buildings interact and change together.
