The AJ Student Prize celebrates the work of students completing undergraduate and postgraduate architecture courses. Submitted by tutors of ARB and RIBA-accredited programmes, the entries are listed alphabetically by university name (see table below) along with key data from each school.

The nominees and schools

Click on the school name to view student work and school information

View all the entries here

It is always tempting to search for echoes of current architectural debate in the AJ Student Prize entries. Last year, we noted the effect of the Grenfell report on studio briefs and student work, as well as considerations of whole-life carbon emissions. The latter are even more prevalent this year as the industry continues to grapple with the effects of the climate emergency.

More recently, the profession has sought to address the housing crisis affecting the UK. Later-living and intergenerational building types are increasingly emerging, and these are also being tackled in student projects. Adaptive reuse, retrofit and circular economy principles are embedded in almost every proposal.

However, increasingly important is the twin crisis affecting the early-career jobs market and architecture schools. This year’s architecture graduates are entering one of the toughest job markets of the past 10-to-15 years. The statistical trends and anecdotal evidence point to a growing gulf between the supply of students graduating from architecture courses and the demand from practices advertising vacancies for architectural assistants.

From Waste to Worth by Islam Sakinah Bouterse, undergraduate student at Birmingham City University

And universities themselves are struggling. Architecture departments across the regions have been rocked by funding cuts and staff industrial action.

Added to this, the ARB’s planned changes to the qualification route are likely to cause further disruption before their beneficial effects are felt. The influence of the proposed changes in education can be read in some of the project entries for this year’s AJ Student Prize. Some of the more obvious ones feature university buildings, while others use humour to explore this critical issue (a favourite is the Royal Institute of Humber Monsters). The trickle-down effect of budget cuts, fees and loss of facilities can certainly be felt.

Current difficulties aside, the entries continue to thrill and inspire. This year’s cohorts have produced imaginative, rigorous work, tackling diverse briefs dealing with issues ranging from silviculture and insect cohabitation to wellness centres, disposal of bodies of the deceased and space debris.

View the all the AJ Student Prize entries listed by region here

As always, projects are located across the UK, on sites including Sheffield, Leith, Dumfriesshire and Crewe, and further afield in far-flung locations such as the ports of Tangier and textile markets in Accra, as well as the West Bank. Post-industrial sites, particularly this year in the London Borough of Hackney, remain prevalent. The degree of real-world engagement is encouraging.

Despite the ever-increasing buzz around the threats and opportunities offered by artificial intelligence, it is surprising to see it feature largely in only one studio’s brief, while much less so in others. Some students appear to have begun incorporating AI image generation into their workflows, but others are still pushing classic representation such as hand-drawing and model-making. We predict that establishing coherent and considered use of AI tools will become a much greater challenge for tutors in the coming years.

Re:Construct by Jacob Shipp, postgraduate student at the University of Greenwich

This year, we are delighted to announce that we have had a 100 per cent entry rate, with every ARB or RIBA-accredited course across the country submitting at least one student.

A shout out to new entrant Bath Spa University, which has just celebrated its first graduating cohort and is in the process of launching an MArch course. The new architecture school at the University of Staffordshire will only be eligible to enter next year.

This special free-to-enter prize, sponsored by Marley, is a fantastic platform to celebrate and support the work of both architecture students and schools across the UK. We are delighted to announce that the prizegiving event will take place on the evening of Thursday 9 October, at HTA Design’s beautifully retrofitted offices in Hackney Wick.

Ahead of this event, which is always well-attended, the entries in both the undergraduate and postgraduate categories will be assessed by a jury consisting of former RIBA president and senior architectural manager at Mace, Muyiwa Oki; Urban Radicals partner Era Savvides; CARD Projects founder Katie Fisher; and the two of us. Good luck to all the nominees this year.

While architectural education and the jobs market are going through challenging times, we hope you find the projects submitted for the AJ Student Prize uplifting and optimistic. A lot of careful and time-consuming work has gone into them.

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