AJ Student Prize 2023: Queen’s University Belfast

About the School of Natural and Built Environment

Undergraduate

Charlotte Henrich

Course BSc (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Use/Reuse – The University of 2030
Project title Urban Agriculture Agora

Project description This project is a self-sufficient food network where every vacant plot in Belfast is fully planted, leading the way towards food security in the city. In Queen’s University’s quad, the administration building’s concrete frame is reused to accommodate a sustainable food and events hub. Its façade is designed to be the central mechanism of the plant growing stage. Behind glass panels in CLT portal frames, a series of pulleys is integrated, vertically transporting food in its growing phase. The hub itself has two environments: a less-controlled open production hall that encloses an environmentally contained lecture and kitchen space.

Tutor citation Charlotte’s work is grounded in an informed ethical concern for the interaction of food, community, resources and landscape. She interweaves this with the spatial and tectonic opportunities of a particular site and existing building. Michael McGarry, Alan Jones, Jasna Mariotti

Postgraduate

Adéla Vagová

Course MArch
Studio/unit brief Home and Away
Project title Liquid Edge: Reframing the Networks of Hodonin

Project description This project explores Moravia, a region of the Czech Republic. A permeable wall redefines the edge of the city, a country and a landscape. By giving an edge to an edgeless landscape, its delicacy aims to change existing negative connotations of walls and borders. Every inch of it can be climbed and crawled through: it has dense nets in the sky and light, porous structures meeting the ground. The wall’s loose-fitting design gives back to nature, allowing for agriculture within and forests outside it to thrive. The edge is a permeable membrane with hydrophilic fibrous nets that collect water from the air.

Tutor citation In its examination of a shrinking city, Hodonin in the Czech Republic – a country very much dependent on coal for its energy – this ambitious project seeks new ways to determine and articulate the edges of territories. Gary Boyd, Tom Jefferies