RIBA｜The Presidents Medals Student Awards 2018
The President's Medals History
Established in 1836 when the Institute of British Architects awarded the first Silver Medal to George Godwin for his essay on the 'Nature and Properties of Concrete', the President's Medals are the RIBA’s oldest awards and are regarded as the most prestigious prizes in architectural education globally.
The current format of the awards dates to 1986, when at the celebration of their 150th anniversary, the Institute replaced a large number of student awards, scholarships and prizes with the Bronze and Silver Medals to reward outstanding design work at RIBA Part 1 and Part 2. In 2001, a Dissertation Medal was added to reward accomplished written work.
Participation is by direct invitation only to over 500 schools of achitecture located in 100 countries. Schools are invited to nominate up to 2 entries for the Bronze Medal, up to 2 entries for the Silver Medal, and 1 entry for the Dissertation Medal. In 2024, a record 372 entries were received from 118 schools located in 36 countries.
The winners receive their awards from the RIBA President at a ceremony in December of each year. This coincides with the opening of an exhibition of entries that also tours throughout the UK and internationally.
Over the last few years, this showcase of talented student work has been exhibited in countries such as Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Kuwait, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
Awards are made in the following categories:
- RIBA Dissertation Medal
- RIBA Bronze Medal
- RIBA Silver Medal
In addition, the judging panels of the Bronze and Silver Medals are tasked with selecting the winners of the Serjeant Awards for Excellence in Architectural Drawing and of the RIBA Awards for Sustainable Design, at both Part I and at Part II.
2018 Silver Medal Winner
NO.1 - How to Carve a Giant
Part 2 Project 2018
Sonia Magdziarz
Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) | UK
How to Carve a Giant’ proposes an architecture capable of keeping safe contemporary forms of knowledge, by carving a folk story into the rock underbelly of Helsinki, over long periods of time. Featuring extraordinary shifts in scale and time – composed through the use of digital film and research into cutting-edge stone carving technologies – the project proposes an innovative architectural language that pays tribute to the local tradition.
Sonia Magdziarz
Tutor(s)Dr Penelope HaralambidouKeiichi MatsudaMichael Tite
NO.2 London Physic Gardens: A New Necropolis
Part 2 Project 2018
Sam Coulton
Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) | UK
Inspired by Derek Jarman and Yves Klein’s work the project is a proposal to introduce a resomation necropolis and physic garden; in which our relationship with death is readdressed through the implementation of a botanical garden on the site, fed by the nutrient rich effluent water generated through the process. This environmental method, in which bodies are converted into water, allows us to see death as something potentially beautiful.
Sam Coulton
Tutor(s)Ms Elizabeth DowMr Jonathan Hill
No.3 Tilling the Prado: A Furrow of Re-Construction
Part 2 Project 2018
Ruth McNickle
Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | UK
The excavated landscape offers a unified system of protection for Havana’s culture, buildings and people. The reinstatement of Cuba’s National Art Schools into the city centre preserves its rich culture through dance, music and art education, operating in tandem with workshops that craft the building materials required to reconstruct Havana’s eroding architecture, and simultaneously, the landscape acts as a bilge tank and point of refuge during flood.
Ruth McNickle
Tutor(s)Victoria Clare BernieAdrian Hawker
No.4 Infrastructures of Memory, Phygital Bodies in a Concrete Cloud
Part 2 Project 2018
Kevin Herhusky
California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo USA
How can we revive an architecture saturated-in-memory? This thesis explores future techniques of preservation. Retrofitting the current architectural protector of memory, the data-center, from memory-prison into memory-palace - a spectacle of preservation. An expanding cloud condenses data into a hybrid of digital and physical space - establishing a new and engaging phygital-vernacular. Imperfect, low-res techniques-of-preservation and highly-articulated systems of infrastructure weave together into an intricate, extra-dimensional tapestry of memory.
Kevin Herhusky
Tutor(s)Karen Langer
2018 SOM Winner
No.1 Wild City
Part 2 Project 2018
Margaret Ndungu
De Montfort University | UK
The Wild City is a book by the author/ student that uses narrative techniques to analyse the characteristics of some of Leicester’s historical sites. For each chosen site there is a factual analysis which is then interpreted in writing, imagery and physical models as a specific wild animal. This is one way that the storyteller conjures up new meanings to existing spaces.
Margaret Ndungu
Tutor(s)
Ben Cowd
Thomas Hopkins
2018 Serjeant Award
NP.1 Hotel Mollino: Staging Spaces of the Everyday as Heterotopias of Performance in Scenography and Architecture
Part 2 Project 2018
Maria Marilia Lezou
University of Greenwich | UK
The project is inserted into the Mollino House as a series of scaled models and is depicted through a set of film stills that navigate the viewer through the design. The project is curated in the form of a collection of both functional and fictional hotel spaces, directing the viewer between the drawing, the model and the screen. This research suggests that performative models deploy a particular engagement with the everyday through the model’s staging of space.
Tutor(s)Max Dewdney
David Hemingway
