The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is pleased to announce the winners of its annual awards for the world’s best student architecture projects, the 2022 President’s Medals, now in its 186th year.

The RIBA Silver Medal for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 2 or equivalent, is awarded to Annabelle Tan at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality. 

A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality is an investigation into notions of ‘tropicality’ in the context of Singapore. Spanning 4.2 km, Annabelle’s scheme is a socio-ecological continuum linking a threatened forest to a national nature reserve. It includes housing, educational spaces, and areas for civic engagement made from regenerative materials produced along the site. 

Commendations in the RIBA Silver Medal category: 

The RIBA Bronze Medal (for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 1 or equivalent) goes to Mary Holmes (University of Cambridge) for Out of the Closet, Into the Garden. 

Mary proposes the queering and retrofitting of two rows of terraced houses in the heart of a suburb in Harlow. In this context, mutual support and collectivity are centred to create an enduring queer space. 

The judging panel of the RIBA Bronze Medal awarded a High Commendation toCommon Ground | Leith by Inka Eismar (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) and Commendations to: 

The RIBA Dissertation Medal is also awarded to Annabelle Tan (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) for Past, Present and Post-Tropicality: Viewing Singapore through an ‘Infra(-)structural’ Field. 

Commendations in the RIBA Dissertation Medal category go to: 

Recognising the importance of climate action in the development of architectural design proposals, the RIBA has awarded the RIBA Awards for Sustainable Design for the fourth year. At Part 1, the award went to Inka Eismar (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) for Common Ground | Leith. At Part 2, it went to Annabelle Tan (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) for A Journey through Past, Present and Post-Tropicality. 

The Serjeant Awards for Excellence in Drawing have been awarded to Nathan Tipping-Stevenson (Falmouth University) for Leow Keskorra ha Dyski: A Place to Assemble and Learn at Part 1, and Nadir Qazim Mahmood (Manchester School of Architecture) for Nirvana at Part 2. 

RIBA President Simon Allford said: “This year’s RIBA President’s Medals celebrate the talent and work of architecture students from around the world. The record number of entries this year address contemporary topics with immense social and environmental significance. As ever the range, scope and scale of their inquiry is extremely impressive.  

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to the tutors and schools of architecture who have fostered and encouraged such promising minds. I look forward to seeing how they develop these speculations on architecture and life in the years to come. 

We have been running these awards for many decades and opened them up to the wider world of non-validated schools when I was VP for education over a decade ago. As well as being a celebration of this year's student preoccupations, the work now adds to our quite extraordinary archive of a long history of student inquiry. 

On a personal note, I fondly remember awaiting the result of our Silver Medal nominated project with my partners at AHMM over 30 years ago - we were unplaced but of course we consoled ourselves with the fact we were involved!”