Great British designers among record entries for Archiprix International prize

A record number of graduate designers have entered the tenth edition of Archiprix International – the global biannual competition for young, graduate designers – all of whom are vying for the prestigious Hunter Douglas Award.

A total of 380 submissions, including nine from Great Britain, have been sent in by 470 young architects, urban planners and landscape architects from universities in 87 countries, including Australia, Brazil, USA, Norway and Chile.

The renowned competition is an initiative of the Archiprix Foundation, a partnership between Dutch educational institutions for higher education in the field of architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture.

The foundation is supported by Hunter Douglas and since the first edition of Archiprix International in 2001, students from more than 800 universities have taken part in the competition, which looks for the best graduation project from a Master's programme.

The winner, who will receive the coveted Hunter Douglas Award, will be announced on February 10, 2017 at an event hosted by the CEPT University, in Ahmedabad, India.

There are four entries from post-graduate students at English universities: Ekin Turgay from the School of Architecture and Design from the University of Brighton; Panagiotis Demiris, from the Architectural Association School of Architecture; Kit Wong from Norwich University of the Arts; and Matthew Pearson from the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture.

Students studying in Scotland have also submitted four entries. They are: Janis Vilcins from the Faculty of Design Scott Sutherland School of Architecture at Robert Gordon University; a joint submission from Samantha Harrison, Elena Sorokina and Bradley Krom from the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh; Christine Halliday from the Department of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde; and Rory More from the Mackintosh School of Architecture at the University of Glasgow.

A submission by Mohammed Awadalla, who studies at The Welsh School of Architecture at the University of Cardiff, completes the Great British entries.

Aad Kuiper, President and CEO of European Operations at Hunter Douglas, said the choice of India as host country for the competition is an interesting one.

“India's fast growing population and the resulting urbanisation are posing huge challenges in the areas of housing and infrastructure,” he said.

“This country is undergoing a metamorphosis: in the next five to 10 years, 17 large and 200 small airports need to be built. Millions of people need to be housed, in cities that already populated by one to 12 million inhabitants.

“The consequences for the built environment are immense, which means the solutions need to come mainly from the field of architecture.”

All the entries will be considered by an international judging panel comprising: Frida Escobedo, architect at Frida Escobedo in Mexico; Yttje Feddes, a landscape architect from Feddes/Olthof in the Netherlands; Marina Tabassum, an architect at MTA, Bangladesh; and Steven Smith, architect/urbanist from Urban Narrative, in the UK. The panel is chaired by Bimal Patel, an architect at HCP Design Planning and Management, president of CEPT University in Ahmedabad.

For more information about Archiprix, the winners and their projects, visit www.archiprix.org