Jun 22 2007
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Awards for Research are calling for entries for the 2007 awards. The winners will be awarded at the RIBA President’s Medals Awards on 28 November 2007 at the RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1. This is the second year of the awards, which will be presented annually to help promote and champion outstanding research, and entries are invited in the following three categories:
PhD Thesis: for the best PhD Thesis from an RIBA-validated School of Architecture
University-located Research: for a research project based in a university or initiated in an RIBA-validated School of Architecture
Professional Practice-located Research: for a research project initiated by an RIBA member or RIBA registered/chartered practice
The entries will be judged on their contribution to architecture, originality, significance and rigour, and the winning entries must be regarded as an exceptional contribution to architectural knowledge. The judges may also award commendation to one or more other shortlisted submissions in each category.
Jack Pringle, President of the RIBA, is looking forward to the competition’s progress:
“These awards inaugurated in 2006 and significantly now incorporating practice based research, reflect the importance that the RIBA, as a learned institution and the foremost knowledge repository for the profession, attaches to cultural research. Research drives our understanding of what architecture can do and what it can become, and it is time excellence in research received the recognition it deserves. These awards also have another important role to play in strengthening the links between students of architecture and the profession.”
This year’s awards follow the success of the 2006 inaugural RIBA President’s Awards for Research, presented in December 2006. The winner for the Outstanding PhD category was Dr. Rajat Gupta of Oxford Brookes University for his PhD, entitled Investigating the potential for local carbon dioxide reductions: developing a Geographic Information System - based domestic energy, carbon counting and carbon reduction model. Dr. Wendy Pullan of the University of Cambridge won the award for Outstanding University-led Research with her work, Conflict in Cities: Architecture and Urban order in Divided Jerusalem