Awards success for Cass students

Students have been presented with RIBA North West London Society of Architects Student Awards in recognition of their live projects.

Date: 31 October 2016

Three student projects from The Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design have received awards from the North West London Society of Architects (NWLSA) at a ceremony this week at the RIBA.

Earlier this year undergraduate and postgraduate architecture students from The Cass presented their projects to a panel of NWLSA judges as part of this year’s RIBA NWLSA Live Projects awards.

The awards recognise projects which demonstrate community engagement with real clients and how quality design can be combined with excellent social engagement, entrepreneurship and activism. Each of the successful projects have been awarded a £200 prize and a certificate.

Abhiroop Bhattachrya and Katarzyna Kuzniarz (Studio 10) received an Undergraduate Prize for ‘InterAct,’ a project which aims to explore what makes a neighbourhood civic.

‘InterAct’ uses a series of projects involving art and architectural practices, live community interaction and methodical architectural design research to re-imagine the area around Roman Road, London, as a ‘Civic Neighbourhood’.

Alastair Greig (Free Unit) won a Postgraduate Prize for his final year project, ‘More Than a View.’ The project focuses on Skipness village and country-estate on the west coast of Scotland, an area renowned for its natural beauty but affected by costs of upkeep and the migration of young people leaving the area to find employment.

‘More Than a View’ aims to encourage a way of life linked to its surroundings, taking the presence of nature at Skipness and using it as an educational resource. Inspired by the motto Ecology, Creativity, Community, Economy – four interventions aim to engage residents and visitors with a privately owned estate, fostering a greater sense of belonging and responsibility towards the land and each other.

Chloe Anderson and Sogand Babol (Free Unit) were also awarded a Postgraduate Prize for ‘Conditional School,’ a joint thesis on the live rebuilding of a school in volatile, post-earthquake Nepal. As the project evolved it focused on promoting school building as a way of hosting learning for the whole town, alongside developing a new set of guiding mantra for the process of design and construction.

The RIBA NWLSA covers the London Boroughs of Haringey, Enfield, Barnet, Harrow, Brent, Ealing, Hillingdon and Hounslow.

Image: Site Model, Skipness by Alistair Greig