Graduate Prizes in the School of Architecture

Heman Xia - MA Interior Design

Originally from China, Heman is an interior designer with a passion for architecture, spatial narrative, and the social environment. Their graduate project, Neverland of Manuscripts, is set in a speculative, dystopian 2095 when sea levels have risen, London has been submerged and communities have moved either underwater or to higher altitudes. In this imagined scenario, manuscripts have become crucial in bringing people back from a digital future to remember the era of physical artefacts and the written word.

Find out more about Heman's graduate project.

Siqi Liu - MA Interior Design

Siqi, who came to the RCA from a career in stage design, has digitally created an optician’s shop for Cubitts within a pair of railway arches at Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross, London. Employing perspectives and optical illusions, their design is a three-dimensional spatial realisation of the Cubitts butterfly logo, playing with viewpoints, sight-lines, eye-levels and vanishing points. Inside, the spaces employs gridded modules which using the rules of perspective to offer different ocular experiences at different spots in the shop.

Find out more about Siqi's graduate project.

Joseph Heffernan - MA Architecture

Jospeh's project, 'Useless Terrain', explores the exhaustion of turf in rural Ireland, focusing on the productivity of a vital eco-system. The project proposes a walkway around the bog, as it slowly repairs itself from violent colonial and industrial scarring. This walkway will dam the bog, keeping it waterlogged and plugging the indents and scars left by hyper-industrialisation and extraction from the land.  Told through a conceptual drawing practice, navigating the passing of time and the steady moving and breathing of the bog, the project determines a new relationship and ritual with the terrain. 

Find out more about Joseph's graduate project.

The organisers of the Inside/Out Lecture Series - Francesca Morris, Teresia Guest, Zhanwan Zhang and Chaerim Shin

Inside/Out is a public lecture series organised by and for Interior Design students. Over the past academic year this has included lectures on unruly urban futures with London-based design practitioners Publica, a book launch with Canalside Press and an exclusive screening of 'In Conversation with Eileen Gray', an interview film with the revered designer. Click play on the above video to watch a recording of their event with award-winning design studio, Yatofu.

Gabrielle Quek - MA Architecture

Gabi is an Architectural Designer based in London and Singapore whose interests lie in how spatial design can be implemented to confront sociopolitical frontiers, as well as how it serves as a tool to address the ongoing challenges posed by the climate crisis. Her project, 'Dire Straits: A Prototype for Coastal Inhabitation', questions how the terms of the transactional relationship between land and sea can be reconsidered in Southeast Asia, enhancing the dialogue between nature and people.

Find out more about Gabi's graduate project.

Anusha Alamgir - MA Architecture

Originally from Bangladesh, Anusha's work investigates the on-going homogeneity of values in Bengali society due to globalisation, media and the internet. 'The Body As A Site' subverts forms that are so predominant in online media by proposing alternative, inhabitable forms. The proposal is a tutorial teaching the viewer how to construct a structural wearable filter for the form, one that defies stereotypes of existing body structures and further questions the biological and physical limitations of the human body.  

Find out more about Anusha's graduate project.