Graduate Prizes from the School of Architecture 2024

School of Architecture Dean's Prize

Max Cooper-Clark

Max Cooper-Clark presents ‘Pits and Pansies’, which explores the pit-town of Nenthead. His project seeks to make life with lead liveable through investigating post-extractive sites and queer ecologies, more-than-just-toxic leftovers and normative acts of care.

MA Architecture Head of Programme Prize

Matthew Hearn

Matthew has used his craft and labor as method. He has cultivated new forms of value that can be cared for, enjoyed, and shared, in collaboration and dialogue with a 3m x 3m souvenir plot of land on the West Coast of Scotland. The land, so scarce in its spatial offering so as to be legally defined as ‘useless’ is the perfect collaborator to his labor. Together, the land’s suppressed physical dimension is foregrounded, and materially extended into new spatial realities that totally reconsider use, value, and access to space.

Media Studies Prize

Rebecca Antonia Miller

Miller's winning project unfolds copper extraction’s multiple contradictions in the context of Parys Mountain - a disused open-pit copper mine. It maps the story of two opposing processes at work in copper extraction: the cyclical reuse of copper contrasting the linear process of water toxification. It illustrates the contradiction in the circular economy of copper extraction: that mining sites become valueless.

MA Environmental Architecture Head of Programme Prize

Asfah Hamid

Asfah's practice ‘Mycelial Polyphonies’ delves around the idea of mycelium being the silent architect, with a decentralised structure. Mycelium is polyphony in bodily form. Each of the voices is a hyphal tip, exploring a soundscape for itself. Although each is ‘free to wander’ their wanderings can’t be seen as separate from others. There is no main voice. There is no lead tune. There is no central planning. Yet, from this organic interplay, emerges a mesmerising form, revealing the inherent beauty of nature’s orchestration

Aya El Khouri, Jinwon Hong, Yingzixuan Wang

Atmospheric Protocols is a project exploring the migration of war through the atmosphere, architecture and politics, visualising these invisible forces. The platform includes evolving guidelines, community contributions and interactive tools for understanding and engaging with the state of the atmosphere, highlighting the entanglement between meteorological, political, social and personal climates.

Xianxuan Meng, Ziying Lin

Meng and Lin's collaborative project explores desert environments with research turning to the world’s largest desert, the Sahara Desert. Their research focussed on the environmental and social impacts of nuclear testing. Through the use of drawing and mapping practices as a medium for documenting they are questioning and interrogating these realities, and ultimately collating them into a compilation of information translated into multiple languages for dissemination.

School of Architecture Climate/ Spatial Justice Prize

Sam Joseph

Sam's winning project, Why Did(n’t) You Leave?, is a powerful and meaningful project which aims to highlight the significance of creating empowering environments for survivors of domestic abuse. It advocates for societal change and increased funding to support women and marginalised groups in urban environments. Central to the project is the repurposing of a former factory on Gillender Street, London, into a safe transitional  home, community education centre and art gallery addressing societal norms and gender based violence.

Aya El Khouri, Jiwon Hong, Yingzixuan Wang

Atmospheric Protocols is a project exploring the migration of war through the atmosphere, architecture and politics, visualising these invisible forces. The platform includes evolving guidelines, community contributions and interactive tools for understanding and engaging with the state of the atmosphere, highlighting the entanglement between meteorological, political, social and personal climates.

MA Interior Design Head of Programme Prize

Yasamin Moshirabadi

Yasamin's winning project ‘Iranian Shaal’ sources images from banners and phrases displayed on walls and streets during the protests in Iran in order to form a ‘Shaal' that instigates a discussion regarding the ongoing struggles of Iranian people.

Shinjae Kim

Kim's winning project, London Material Centre, is a material library that aims to sustain and preserve disappearing materials and designs. It stores and sells a variety of historic materials from both modern and contemporary eras. The London Material Center is located at 16 Blossom St. near Spitalfields, which has a long history, and serves as a space to preserve historic architecture, narratives, and heritage of materiality.

Xiangfei Tong

Tong's project is inspired by Archigram, the Plug-In City architectural theory, and high-tech architecture. Utilising the London Music Archive as a medium, it integrates systematic plug-ins to revitalise site functions, create a new cultural hub and urban public space, and foster cultural cohesion in the East London community.

School of Architecture Image/ Drawing Prize

Ann Shalini Perera

Perera's winning project, Echo Vision utilises VR to integrate accessible sign language, bridging educational gaps in Agartha’s Second World, set in 2034. It shows how sign language can be a powerful tool for overcoming communication barriers and reshaping societal perceptions by educating young people.

MA City Design Head of Programme Prize

Ruihao Yang, Yuzhang Kyle Su

Yang and Su's project, Material Memories seeks to restore the ecological environment of northern Jericho, helping Palestinians reclaim control over their land. By improving soil quality and restoring crop diversity, the project aims to reinforce Palestinian sovereignty.

Rui Lan, Xueyi Xie, Jin Yan

This collaborative project focuses on border landscapes and the movement of undocumented immigrants. It uses 3D animation technology to depict the complex social and spatial contexts of Calais, France, aiming to reveal the marginalisation faced by undocumented immigrants in border areas and exploring how they create a “third space” in these environments. It aims to reshape public perception of borders and undocumented immigrants by reconstructing space and presenting the diverse possibilities within border landscapes.

School of Architecture Model/ Animation/ Film Prize

Miaomiao Liu, Princen Liu

This project, Migrant Memories, focuses on the La Linière refugee camp in France, demonstrating the importance of archives for minorities. Located in the Grande-Synthe region of Dunkirk, France, the La Linière camp was the first official refugee camp in France, aiming to provide better living conditions for the refugees of the former Basloch camp.