The 2010 Architects for Health (AfH) Student Health Design Awards, presented recently at the RIBA’s London headquarters, saw the highest number of entries – at nearly 100 – in the event’s four-year history, with architecture and interior design students from all over the world demonstrating their talent, imagination, and creative skills, in the quest for the top prize.
Jaime Bishop, a director of Fleet Architects, AfH Executive board member, and the competition’s organiser, outlines the Awards’ key aims, describes the shortlisted and winning entries, discusses how candidates addressed the brief, and explains how the judges selected this year’s winner and two runners-up.
An evening in late August saw the presentation, at the RIBA’s headquarters in London, of the fourth annual AfH Student Health Design Awards. The awards were conceived in 2007, with the goal of bridging a perceived schism between the practising architectural healthcare design community and academic teaching, and to encourage the investigation of healthcare architecture as a programme and function-driven design, and not simply an extruded plan or envelope. As the chair of the judges, John Allan, acknowledged, it is currently a difficult climate for healthcare architecture, with “cuts all around us”, and, as the awards were presented, heavy rain was lashing London outside. Inside though, there was a welcome chance to celebrate healthcare design, and a new generation of architects engaging with its challenges. The 10 shortlisted candidates this year each talked for four minutes about their work, before answering questions. As the chair noted, the “modesty, elegance, and assurance, of the presentations was exemplary”. After the candidates’ short presentations, the judges retired to an ante-room to debate and pick the winner, a process that Brookfield representative, and commercial director, Paul Serkis described as “extremely difficult’. Finally, the results were announced. The event was sponsored by Brookfield, the global asset management specialist whose ongoing support has been vital to growing the competition, and has demonstrated a real commitment to the development of the quality of healthcarerelated design. Paul Serkis spoke of the importance of getting out the message that: “schemes are still getting built…there is still investment out there”.
The brief and judging criteria
Log in or register FREE to read the rest
This story is Premium Content and is only available to registered users. Please log in at the top of the page to view the full text.
If you don't already have an account, please register with us completely free of charge.
