The NSW Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects has announced the winners in its revamped 2018 NSW Student Architecture Awards, recognising the best student work completed in the last year from the four accredited schools of architecture in NSW.
Seven students from the universities of Newcastle, Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney received medals from a competitive field of 39 entries.
NSW Chapter President and 2018 Jury Chair, Andrew Nimmo said the awards showcased the best in emerging young architectural talent across the state.
“The architectural awards program presented by the Australian Institute of Architects is the most rigorous and prestigious architectural awards process in Australia,” Mr Nimmo said.
“For any architectural practice, whether large or small, established or emerging; it is a great honour to receive an Institute award and they are highly coveted. We want the NSW Student Architecture Awards to be similarly regarded and to become the benchmark of design excellence recognition in NSW.
“The calibre of projects entered was of the highest order and point to a pipeline of innovative talent coming through our architectural schools. We were particularly pleased to see a strong gender balance among the winning students, something the Institute it working hard to foster and strengthen in the profession moving forward.”
The NSW Graduate Medal, which is for a design project carried out in the final year of the Master of Architecture degree, was awarded to Andrew Hannah-Davies of the University of Newcastle for his project ‘Beneath the Surface: Taking the Waters in Moree’. The project proposes the redevelopment of existing facilities and the surrounding landscape of the famous healing waters of the Moree Artesian Baths and Swimming Pool. The jury recognised that this project “takes us on a social, physical and ethereal journey of healing. It is an imaginative, passionate, response in its use of iconography, collective memory, physicality, materiality, form and landscape”.
The NSW Undergraduate Medal, which is for a design project carried out in the final year of the undergraduate degree, was awarded to Connie He of the University of Sydney for her project ‘Between Anchors’. The project, a space for discussion, display and performances, is situated in Sydney’s Domain. The jury recognised that she has re-imagined this site as a “landscape for discussion, display and performance by celebrating the non-linear and favouring playful discovery” remarking that she “skilfully addresses a spatially complex brief with elegance and rigour”.
The NSW Architectural Communication Award, which acknowledges excellence in architectural communication and celebrates the power of well-presented architectural design, was awarded to Brennan Clody, also of the University of Sydney. His project, ‘Jazz Garden’ was acknowledged by the jury as a “very complete and consistent presentation; from verbal presentation through to sketches, drawings, model and delightful black and white vignettes that captured the poetics of space”.
The NSW Architectural Technologies Award, which acknowledges excellence in innovation for the integration of technology, structure and/or construction was awarded to Melinda Barbagallo and Francesca Capicchioni of the University of Technology Sydney for their project Reh-zophora. Their project, a facility at the mouth of the Proserpine River adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef, targets the problem of eutrophication through the extraction, treatment and repurposing of algae for food and medicine was acknowledged by the jury as “embracing technological innovation as a means of shifting society towards more sustaining and sustainable futures […] an alluring project that skilfully synthesises conceptual and technical ambitions in an articulate and refined architectural proposition”.
The awards were presented on Friday 2 March and an exhibition of the works submitted will be held at the NSW Chapter premises, Tusculum, from 5-16 March.