Exploring the sustainable survival of cities and towns
Submission deadline: May 28, 2021
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has opened applications for the 2021 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship. The scholarship seeks to reward one architecture student and fund their travel to explore the sustainable survival of cities and towns. This year, in response to global travel restrictions, students can alternatively submit a proposal to research a topic in their home country. Applications are welcomed from students around the world and a 7,000 GBP grant will be awarded to the winner, decided by a panel of judges that includes Lord Foster and RIBA President Alan Jones.
Applications are open to students who are enrolled in, or have successfully completed, the first year of a professional qualification in architecture at one of the higher education institutions invited to participate.
On the RIBA Scholarship, Lord Foster said: "As a student I won a prize that allowed me to spend a summer travelling through Europe and to study first hand buildings and cities that I knew only from the pages of books. It was a revelation—liberating and exhilarating in so many ways. Today it is the privilege of the Norman Foster Foundation to support the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship, which I hope will have a lasting legacy—offering the chance for discovery and the inspiration for exciting new work—for generations to come".
RIBA President Alan Jones added: "The annual Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship gives aspiring architects the chance to carry out important research, addressing global challenges and the sustainable future of our towns and cities. Students need our support now more than ever, and we are very grateful to the Norman Foster Foundation for their ongoing generosity to make this grant possible".
First established in 2006, the scholarship, supported by the Norman Foster Foundation, is now in its fifteenth year and is intended to fund national or international research on a topic related to the sustainable survival of our towns and cities, in a location of the student’s choice. Past RIBA Norman Foster Scholars have travelled through the Americas, Europe, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle and Far East and Russia. Proposals for research might include: learning from the past to inform the future; the future of society; the density of settlements; sustainability; the use of resources; the quality of urban life; and transport.
The deadline for submissions is 5pm (GMT) Friday, May 28, 2021. For more information, please visit architecture.com.
Since 2007, the Norman Foster Foundation, London has provided the following traveling fellowships:
2020: Iulia Cistelecan—London School of Architecture—"Life Between Shelters: Refugee Camps of Today becoming Cities of Tomorrow"
2019: Siti Nurafaf Ismail—University of Malaya, Malaysia—"Architecture of Humility"
2018: Steven Hutt—University of Greenwich, UK—"East of Eden"
2017: Chloe Loader—University of Lincoln, UK—"Emerging Cities: Sustainable Masterplanning in the Global South"
2016: Abel Feleke—University of Western Australia—"Weaving the Urban Fabric: Examining the Significance of Community"
2015: Charles Palmer—University of Sheffield, UK—"Cycling Megacities"
2014: Joe Paxton—Bartlett (UCL), UK—"Buffer Landscapes 2060
2013: Sigita Burbulyte - Bath University, UK—"Charles Booth Going Abroad"
2012: Thomas Aquilina—University of Edinburgh—"Material Economies: Recycling Practices in Informal Settlements Along African Longitude 30"
2011: Sahil Bipin Deshpande—Rizvi College of Architecture, India—"Sanitation: A Case Study across Eight Metropolises"
2010: Andrew Mackintosh—Robert Gordon University, UK—"In Search of Cold Spaces"
2009: Amanda Rivera – University of Bio Bio, Chile—"Ancestral Cities, Ancestral Sustainability"
2008 Faizan Jawed Siddiqi—Rizvi College of Architecture, India—"The Role of Public Transport in Shaping Sustainable Humane Habitats"
2007: Ben Masterton-Smith—Bartlett, UK— "Emerging East: Exploring and Experiencing the East Asian Communist City".
