Graduate Prizes from the School of Architecture 2026

Dean's Prize

Ellie Lodder (ADS10 Architecture)

After the Harvest: From No-Man’s Land to Common Land reimagines Germany’s former inner border as a site of agricultural collaboration. Drawing upon everyday agricultural elements as an adaptable architectural language, it develops a shared method through which communities can assemble according to local conditions, observe, disagree with one another, and disseminate understanding gathered over time.

MA Architecture Head of Programme Prize

Anna-Elina Pieber

Located in a peatland in Rohr im Burgenland, Millimetres of Permeating Frontier is a rehydration and absorption institute that uses deep timber pillars to monitor soil moisture, collect rainwater, and restore the ancient, depleted landscape. Inspired by nineteenth-century wellness institutes, the project promotes bodily resilience and ecological cultivation through continuous, immersive contact between humans, water, and peat soil.

MA Interior Design Head of Programme Prize

Inside/Out Crew (McConnell Quinn, Daniela Palacios, Diksha Vijaykumar Radhika, Jenifer Oviedo, Maria Eduarda Rahal, Valentin Schmidhuber, Yifan Wang)

Inside/Out is the Royal College of Art’s student-led lecture series, organised by MA Interior Design students to connect the programme with leading voices across art, architecture and design. This year’s programme featured Harry Nuriev (Crosby Studios), Assemble, OK-RM, CANADA, Soft Baroque, Heatherwick Studio, Hudson & Thames Publishing, Bad Weather, Six Dots Design, Ben Willett and Inés Miño Izquierdo.

MA Environmental Architecture Head of Programme Prize

Eshwarya Grover & Katy Knapp

At the port of Ermoupoli, a report commissioned by the Neorion shipyard attributes heavy metal contamination to tanneries and textile factories that closed decades ago, while the island's environmental observatory disputes this account. Entering this conflict through the ground of Syros, the project traces contamination, sediment, and the spectral presence of water to question how environmental responsibility is assigned.

MA City Design Head of Programme Prize

Maha Aljaafari (CD)

A Council for the Mother of Palms reconnects Al-Ahsa's Jabal Qarah, palm groves,and historic district of Al-Koot through a shared programme of knowledge transmission and collective land stewardship through palm-frond weaving and earthen reconstruction. The project reactivates the interdependent water, material, and social systems of the oasis that were fragmented by petro-urbanisation.

MArch Design Practice Head of Programme Prize

Kavya Kataria

Unfurling Decades is a phased long term plan for the contaminated UCIL Gas Tragedy site in Bhopal. The project treats site assessment infrastructure as memorial architecture, turning instruments of contamination testing into monuments of memory. It spans across stakeholder interviews, contamination research, borehole assessment methods, bioremediation tactics, and the role of the community affected by this disaster.

Media Studies Prize

Amber Sky Primus

8 Warrenside documents the transition of the current family archives - collections of 35mm slides and Amber's Caribbean grandparents’ home before it is put on the market for sale – from ones centred in specific physical conditions to a moving image archive sitting outside a fixed physical plane.

The work imprints intangible bodies in physical space, challenging binary understandings of diaspora as fixed in singular times and places. It is an articulation of the role of physicality within intergenerational experiences of diasporic existence, explored through a negotiation between presence and absence.

Model / Animation / Film Prize

Yanhua Chen (superFUTURES) - Animation

Chameleon is a speculative film and spatial design project imagining a near-future city where access to everyday life is shaped by systems of efficiency. Through the story of an office worker adapting to the system, the project examines how designed environments influence human behaviour, identity, and the ways people navigate an increasingly automated society.

Spatial Justice Prize

Jennifer Oviedo

An emergency blanket reflecting through sound-generated graphics the intergenerational link between acoustic violence and its permeability into the wombs of pregnant women> an unborn baby> reverberating through future generations. It brings into question: when does war really end?

Image / Drawing Prize

Alistair Strode Maskell

This project uses the process of translation to critically examine printed matter as one of the material registers of institutional power. The work is centred around mark making, the artefact, the performative act, and modes of reproduction as strategies for investigating the book form.

Student Prize (Citizenship)

Mcconnell Quinn (ID-superMATTER)

McConnell Quinn received the Citizenship Award in recognition of their contribution to the wider RCA community. During their MA in Interior Design, Quinn became involved in a number of initiatives across the School of Architecture, including curating and leading outreach for the Inside/Out lecture series and helping to curate an industry panel discussion during the final show.