Graduate Prizes in the School of Architecture 2023

MA Interior Design Head of Programme Prize

Geneva Bergelt

Geneva's project Salvage is created from salvaged objects as a way to explore the recycling and recontextualization of meaning found in the residual value of fibers that were once considered waste. Feeling the history emerge through the repurposing of such items yields opportunity for reflection and conversation back to nature and the birth of these raw materials from their essence.

Jiaxin Li

Jiaxin designed a public community space providing recording rooms for musicians near Bowater37. Jiaxin tested the potential of straw when used as acoustic panels to embrace different sound qualities and as an organic texture to create a natural atmosphere. At the end of the project animals will be allowed into the space to eat the straw as part of the recycling cycle. The design is a temporary construction to last for one year before plans for building development.

Find out more about Jiaxin's graduate work.

Jiayi Lin

Leo’s project is a speculative design of future relationships and asks How should space for people who do not want to be bound by the shackles of conventional marriage be designed?. Designing for 2043, when people start looking for a more flexible approach to relationships, the philosophy of the ‘Life Chapter Centre’ believes everyone deserves suitable partner/s at different stages of life.

Find out more about Jiaxin's graduate work.

Jesper Authen

The Architecture of Mortality is a project which explores how societal attitudes to mortality impact how we conduct building reuse. These findings inform an intervention strategy for the ruined Nettleham Hall, anchored in a redesigned program for a crematorium and its ceremonies.

Find out more about Jesper's graduate work.

Stephanie Cheung

The site of 25 Bowater Road is proposed as a versatile childcare and coworking space for parents of young children in Woolwich, Greater London. The intervention attempts to create the conditions that alleviate the burden of these parents and be part of a larger conversation about the realities of childcare, and about transforming the dominant mode of design from luxury in the interest of capital to design as direct aid in the interest of many.

Find our more about Stephanie's graduate work.

Mauricio Salgado

In Madame Parsons, Mauricio considers what the future of the Sex Worker will be in 20 years time, and which new typology of interior spaces could be created in order to enhance a safer working environment for them without the prejudices of society or dangerous exposure that exists now. In 2042, in a world where sex work is decriminalised, how might erotic experiences, which were historically hidden from the view, manifest on the high street?

Find out more about Mauricio's graduate work.

MA Architecture Head of Programme Prize

Zibo Zhang

Folgelandschaft investigates the open-pit coal mine in Hambach, Germany. Responding to the contextual conditions of an open-pit mine, Zibo's project proposes a new method of reclaiming these vast extraction sites, while experimenting with sand and mechanical processes at scales and timeframes that go beyond the conventional architectural realm.

Find out more about Zibo's graduate work.

MA City Design Head of Programme Prize

Yue Dai & Chenxi Wei

Yue and Chenxi's project focuses on the surveillance tactics used by the Israeli government in the Old City of Akka as well as other occupied Palestinian territories. They have generated face mask designs as a proposition while incorporating visitor interaction to develop a more intuitive and insightful understanding of what it might be like to be under watch constantly. Their designed filters affect the cameras, as a form of defence against the systems of surveillance.

Find our more about Yue and Chenxi's graduate work.

MA Environmental Architecture Head of Programme Prize

Jack Sieber & Geraldine Meneses

Woven Collectives investigates relationships between active permaculture farms and forest cooperatives throughout Northern Euboea and aims to assess the feasibility of a partnership network for knowledge-sharing and land stewardship utilising High Productivity Zones. This project posits that cultivation extends beyond mere agricultural production; it is about landscape vitality encompassing principles of reforestation, climate adaptation, community autonomy, and fire mitigation.

Find out more about Jack's and Geraldine's graduate work.

Dean's Prize

Tima Rabbat and Lin Xuan (MA Environmental Architecture)

Sticky Volumes challenges the extent of protection granted to a professional apiary to not only include the territory of a beekeeper, but also that of the bee. This is understood as a way for beekeepers to claim back and protect much larger plots of the Evia Forest landscape. With the understanding of honey economies as honey ecologies, this project proposes to look at honey making as an exploration of the collaboration between plant and pollinator.

Find out more about Tima's and Xuan's graduate work.

Marisa Müsing (MA Architecture)

Mimicry & The Villa of Mysteries is a cyborg re-analysis of ancient frescoes in Pompeii, Italy. Collaborating with AI to generate new identities for characters painted in room 5 of the Villa of Mysteries, the work aims to translate our patriarchal histories to build new queer cyberfeminist architectural perspectives that can live beyond the walls of the ancient fresco.

Find out more about Marisa's graduate work.