2023 LSA GRADUATES WIN RIBA SILVER MEDAL AND COMMENDATION

2023 graduate Ellie Harding has been awarded the RIBA Silver Medal, while fellow 2023 graduate Elliott Wang has received a Commendation.

Our Head of School, Neal Shasore writes:

“The double delight of the RIBA President’s Silver Medal and Silver Medal commendation being awarded to two of our students this year, is quite exceptional. 

The LSA celebrates its tenth birthday this year and what better way to commemorate and celebrate its achievements. Winning these awards is recognition of the school’s rapid trajectory towards making a real impact in the way we educate our architects for the now and in the future, and values the intense hard work of both its faculty and staff. The LSA’s pedagogy has grown and adapted in the last few years to respond positively to the challenges facing a post-Covid planet and these projects embody that change”.

Samantha Hardingham, Academic Director adds:

“Together, these prizes represent the collective commitment required to master the processes of enquiry, observation, doubt, documentation, assembly, re-think, distillation, editing, designing and presenting an architectural project at a time when everything in the world is changing: from climate and understanding of physical and mental health to architectural education and expectations of what do we design now? Led by a shared vision to think better, and smarter about how people live in cities – and in particular London – both these projects carefully consider and boldly propose what that might mean for its people and its existing buildings. 

Ellie’s project is an exemplar of the kind of work the LSA was set up to nurture and champion. Her design-led process generated new forms of drawing to unlock ways of visualising alternative perceptions of space, and then crucially applies them as a design tool. Ellie’s work deploys a design method that is attentively experimental, and proposes a kind of radical realism that communicates to architects and non-architects alike

Elliott’s work is a particularly fine example of the LSA MArch programme as it draws on all aspects that the two-year programme offers, comprising practice placement and studio-based learning. Elliot has used his time to build-up extensive knowledge in the field of housing, drawing on best practice globally, as well as digging deep into local cultural and historical sources.

Congratulations to Ellie and Elliott for these fantastic achievements”

Ellie, with her Design Tutors Fabrizio Matillana and Kit Stiby-Harris

Fabrizio Matilana, Ellie’s Second Year Design Tutor wrote:

“As an architect working in the public sector and with housing providers, standards and commercial practice are often attempting to replicate a traditional home. Ellie’s singular disruption is to unfurl concepts of living through a focus that is specific to those with Alzheimer’s, resulting in accommodation that is homely, tailored to their spatial requirements and connected to the wider urban grain. At a time of failing social services, a strained NHS and a decline in mental health, projects that acknowledge the limits of architecture, but embrace its powerful agency in creating carefully crafted spaces that elevate the experience of living, have a prescient contribution at a time of unfortunate decline. Ellie’s Silver Medal win recognises architecture’s vital role in shaping places for a community to heal and not being excluded from society.

Personally, I consider this a career highlight: meeting a student with Ellie’s intelligence and design sensibility and nurturing her innate talent to develop a truly unique project that has been so duly recognised. I look forward to seeing Ellie’s career soar to great heights and seeing her unique design ethos reach communities that need a thoughtful and enriching quality of place”.

To learn more about Ellie’s award-winning project, click here. 

To learn more about Elliott’s project, click here.