AJ Student Prize 2023: University of Edinburgh

About the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Undergraduate

Arada Chitmeesilp

Course MA (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Tectonics (Timber Studio)
Project title Zero-Kilometre: Leith Urban Croft Food Hub

Project description Centred around ‘zero-kilometre’ sourcing, where food and materials are acquired locally, this project aims to support local communities by prioritising local food and materials. Dedicated spaces for two local food charities, Community Croft and Empty Kitchen Full Hearts, are established among a cluster of neglected buildings and courtyards in Leith with spaces to gather, work, share skills and communally eat. The zero-kilometre principle is integrated into the scheme’s food production and construction, reclaiming materials from the site and other sites’ demolition and repurposing existing structures.

Tutor citation The strength, delicacy and depth of Arada’s work comes from her highly refined, iterative working methodologies which use diagrams, sketches and model making to formulate and develop her thesis. Her attitude to material selection and assembly embraces a sense of making do, adjusting and reusing. Rachael Hallett Scott, Jamie Henry

Postgraduate

Gus Nicholds

Course MArch
Studio/unit brief Sender Berlin
Project title Framing Fields of Berlin: Reimagining the Garden Colony

Project description The scheme is centred around the concept of ‘Nachverdichtung’, a method of densifying urban centres by building within gaps in the fabric. One half of Berlin’s A104 autobahn, due to be fully decommissioned in 2024, has been disassembled and the concrete road slabs transposed to embed themselves in the spaces left behind. In between these ‘stones’ in the landscape, programmes of inhabitation propagate resulting in a garden colony. The proposal reimagines ‘garden colonies’ or ‘kleingarten’, once cleared to make way for the elevated motorway, as places for living as well as territories of recreation.

Tutor citation Striking a particularly delicate balance between urbanisation and naturalisation, Gus’s project tackles preoccupations such as the integration of living and working, inhabitation of productive landscapes and needs of transient urban populations – human and nonhuman. Miguel Paredes Maldonado, Andrea Faed, Andrew Brooks