AJ Student Prize 2023 winners revealed

Every RIBA and ARB-accredited school in the UK was invited to nominate students for the sixth annual AJ Student Prize, which celebrates the best work across three categories: undergraduate, postgraduate and sustainability.

The 2023 prize was judged by Ed Fowles of Feilden Fowles, who has judged the AJ Student Prize since it started, Betty Owoo of Be First and Rachel Hoolahan, sustainability co-ordinator at Orms. The jury was chaired by AJ technical editor and deputy architecture editor Frances Williams. Sponsored by Marley, the AJ Student Prize celebration event was held at Perkins & Will’s offices at 150 Holborn, London.

The undergraduate category was won by Arada Chitmeesilp of the University of Edinburgh for her project Zero-Kilometre: Leith Urban Croft Food Hub.

Centred around the concept of ‘zero-kilometre’ sourcing, where food and materials are acquired locally, this project creates spaces for two local food charities within a cluster of neglected buildings in Leith.

The judges praised her project for prioritising both local food and materials and for ‘being very carefully considered as to where resources had come from and are spent in terms of energy use’.

They said her models were beautiful, the 'delicate' drawings really lovely and ‘the mapping of the harvesting of materials was really impressive’.

Architect apprentice Mehul Ashok Jethwa of De Montfort University won the postgraduate prize. His project Resilient Horizons: Safeguarding Suffolk’s Historic Coastal Villages from Climate Change was chosen by the judges for being 'playful and fun yet practical'. They were impressed by the 'evocative imagery' and 'convincing resolution'.

The project offers an alternative vision for a community of makers and farmers in Dunwich, Suffolk, through the design of a collective workshop, resource library and homestead in a newly formed marshland, and uses both retrofit and material reuse.

The judges added: ‘The range of scales which the student was dealing with was very impressive as well as how it has all fed into the design of the buildings and the development of a new vernacular.’

A highly commended was also awarded in the postgraduate category. This was given to Max Bridge and Dimitar Zhelev of the University of Sheffield for their public house project which takes the theme of 'slowness' and inserts a new public house into a forgotten Victorian building in Fargate, Sheffield.

The judges really liked the project, The Tortoise & The Hare, for how it 'celebrated slow architecture' and 'how it rejoices in the tactility and material qualities but also the cultural significance of place and space and making architecture'.

Finally, MArch student Shan Wei Chew of the University of Bath has taken the sustainability prize for The Udaipur Plastic School, a project that envisions a second life for Udaipur's waste plastic as pavements, shelters and buildings. The scheme is arranged around two public streets lined with the functions of plastic recycling, and inviting participation with the landscape providing materials for prototyping bioplastics.

The judges unanimously said they 'could have looked at the drawings for hours!' adding that the project was 'a truly holistic take on sustainability from biodiversity to materiality' and that ‘the amount of detail in terms of thermal performance was extraordinary - its a very sophisticated approach to cooling in warmer climates’.

For the first time since the prize's inception, all of the winners are from architecture schools outside London.