The RSAW Student Awards are delivered to celebrate the talent of architecture students in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) and the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), to reward them in the pursuit of excellence in the study of architecture.
Here are the 2024 winners and tutor comments:
Drew Dennehy, Part 1 Student at UWTSD
Drew shaped an interesting brief from his masterplan proposal, that offers the opportunity to produce something innovative for a relatively new building type.
The programme allows for a dramatic, innovative structure and Drew seized this opportunity to create something functional and architecturally striking. The final proposal is visually powerful and the articulation between the ground plane and the upper floors well-articulated. The public are allowed to walk through the building and see the process of urban farming via a stairwell within the building core.
Careful consideration has been given on how plants are serviced which has added another layer of depth to the realisation of the 'machine for growing'.
Freya Kirby, Part 1 Student at WSA
Freya's project Houses in a Garden attempts to densify Tower Garden’s Estate in Tottenham, North London in response to the current housing crisis.
The site for the project is a disused allotment within the estate. The estate was built in two phases in an Arts and Crafts style by W.E Riley between 1904 and 1928. The scheme endeavours to reflect the distinct Arts and Crafts style of the surrounding buildings whilst ensuring it meets modern housing standards. A key theme throughout the project was the priority given to gardens, stemming from the quote ‘a house should be clothed by its garden’ by William Morris.
Whilst achieving a density of 95 homes per hectare (with homes ranging from one bedroom to four bedrooms), each home also has access to both private and communal gardens with shared facilities to allow for co-operative housing.
Benjamin Cook, Part 2 Student at WSA
Ben’s ‘Living in the City: Challenging the notion of value in large scale housing developments’ is an exceptionally comprehensive proposal which balances innovation and ambition with practicality and humility, from the scale of the masterplan for living, working, and powering the city, to the scale of a door entry, bench, and space to hang a coat.
Having taken a key leadership role in semester one community engagement and evaluation through the unit’s facilitation of ‘Love Grangetown’ workshops and publication of a unit report, Ben identified current redevelopment of a brownfield ex-industrial site along Dumballs Road, adjacent to Grangetown, as a thesis site. This thesis was informed by the concerns residents expressed in Love Grangetown in relation to housing need and affordability, access to local area employment opportunities, and fears of gentrification and value-extraction from private developers.
Ben’s semester one primer created a back-garden foundry to cast wax forms, exploring what it had meant to work and make in the now defunct Currans factory on the site and identifying themes of community-identity, live-work relationships, and quality and care in crafting. From this study, Ben developed an alternate masterplan vision and detailed proposals for developing housing and mixed-use facilities on Dumballs Road.
‘Living in the City’ is simultaneously quiet and ambitious, familiar and radical. It demonstrates a deep commitment to understanding needs, interests and constraints, as well as an impressively consistent approach to an extraordinarily detailed way of developing a thoughtful and fully considered proposal.
Elias Khlif, Dissertation Award Winner
Dissertation title: Play Between Communist-Era Blocks in Brașov’s Worker's Districts; The Value of Fața Blocului and the Spatial Meaning of Urban Void
In architecture and urban design, the concept of "in-between spaces" often goes unnoticed, yet these areas hold significant, often unseen values that greatly enhance the functionality and aesthetic appeal of our built environment.
In-between spaces - such as courtyards, alleys, parking areas, and transitional zones - serve more than just practical purposes; they play a crucial role in social interaction, environmental sustainability, and overall spatial experience. Using a combination of innovative research methods derived from architecture, visual studies, and ethnography, Elias demonstrates in thier dissertation how play thrives in the interstitial spaces between communist blocks (fața blocului) in the Romanian city of Brașov, transforming them into lively ludoscapes. Their drawings and photographic surveys, where they map observations and interpretations, are not only pleasing to the eye but also evidence the role social capital can play in forming and shaping communities.
This study of fața blocului as intangible heritage will undoubtedly impact how architectural history can be relevant to architectural practice and how play in leftover spaces connects the past to the present and future.
Thank you to our student awards ceremony and Chartered Practice exhibition event sponsor Ibstock and student award sponsor Arcadis for supporting us.
