RCA announces the winners of the 2026 Hyundai Motor Group Awards for Excellence in Sustainability and Creative Practice

Now in their fourth year, the annual awards champion outstanding work from across the RCA’s diverse art and design disciplines. The initiative highlights the critical role interdisciplinary perspectives play in addressing complex global challenges, celebrating projects that challenge societal norms, propose tangible solutions, or evoke powerful responses to the climate crisis.

Members of the 2026 graduating cohort were invited to submit visionary works across three distinct categories: Inspiration, Innovation, and Aesthetics & Craft.

The final selections were determined by a distinguished judging panel, including Simon Loasby, Head of Hyundai Design Centre, Jochen Paeson, Head of Kia Future Design Group and Professor Dale Harrow, Chair of Intelligent Mobility at the RCA.

The winners were honoured during an official ceremony hosted by the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre at the RCA’s Battersea campus, housed within the landmark building designed by world-renowned architecture practice Herzog & de Meuron.

Award winners:

The Inspiration Award, for provocative responses to climate change and sustainability, has been awarded to Ruben Greyson (MA Architecture, 2026) for ‘Re-Jig’.

'Re-Jig' addresses the systemic waste of London's urban timber by introducing custom digital and physical tools designed to process irregular, non-standard roundwood into sustainable architectural structures. Constructed from a single Norway Maple felled in London’s Kensington Gardens, the prototype sequesters 2.75 tonnes of CO2 and demonstrates the beauty and strength of building with natural material variations rather than incinerating them.

The Innovation Award, for projects that propose art or design solutions to make the world more sustainable, has been awarded to Emma Loughnane (MA Architecture, 2026) for ‘ This Green Unpleasant Land’.

'This Green Unpleasant Land' challenges England's feudal patterns of land ownership, where less than 1% of the population owns half the country, by examining how these inherited systems drive climate breakdown and inequality. Combining critical research with fashion, film, and site-based performance, the project uses wearable architectures woven with hidden maps to enable acts of peaceful trespass and rehearse alternative models of collective land stewardship.

The Aesthetics & Craft Award, for stylistic practice that explores the theme of sustainability, has been awarded to Hiền Hoàng (MRes) for ‘How to Touch the Elephant – Ecological Trauma in Post-Agent Orange Landscapes’

'How to Touch the Elephant' explores the lingering, multi-generational ecological trauma of post-Agent Orange landscapes in Vietnam, asking how art can make slow, invisible environmental destruction perceptible. By combining field-recorded bioelectrical soil data with live studio interventions, such as metal corrosion, mycelial growth, and performance, the project presents dynamic installations that register ongoing ecological decay and transformation.