Year 2 students shortlisted for Finsa Prize

Two groups of BSc students shortlisted for the International Finsa Award for Students of Architecture & Design.

Two teams of BSc students from the Welsh School of Architecture were among 20 shortlisted from more than 400 teams that registered for the 2017 International Finsa Award (IFA) for Students of Architecture & Design. Six students from the two teams flew to Madrid with the support of the School. There, they had the opportunity to meet the international panel of judges, along with the other shortlisted teams.

The brief of the 2017 competition focused on the design of a school and/or education facility to meet the needs of children affected by humanitarian crises or natural disasters and required it to be globally adaptable.

Students across the entire second year of our BSc Architectural Studies were asked to think about this brief, especially the design of schools and classrooms, in preparation for their main Spring Term project and came up with a wide range of exciting proposals. Several teams continued to work on their projects and submitted them to the competition. The two projects that were shortlisted were STRAW and Frame.

STRAW (Sustainable & Temporary Refugee Aid Workplace), created by Vidushi Tekriwal, Janniah Evans, Lina Izzati, Khairah Mahfuzah and Lara Bryan, was designed as a flexible IKEA-style kit with a booklet of step-by-step instructions that would be easy for anyone to follow, no construction experience necessary. The project uses straw which is widely available as a highly sustainable building material across the planet.

FRAME, created by Nadya Angelova, Ivan Ignatov, Michal Kasperski and Jacek Baczkowski, was designed as a prefabricated wooden frame. The construction was intended to be highly adaptable to varied contexts by using local readily available materials for the walls, with the opportunity to expand and adapt the frame according to the changing needs of the community.

The International Finsa Award for Students of Architecture & Design aims to encourage and challenge students to explore and redesign the use of wood and other ecological and recyclable materials in construction.

Each submission was judged on feasibility of construction and materials used, adaptability in relation to differing locations, cost (students were asked to include a budget per m2), and cultural implications. The submissions were judged by a panel of architects, architectural journalists and the Chair of Architecture sans Frontières.

The three winning designs each received money prizes to use on an Architecture sans Frontières project of their choice. The prize was sponsored by Finsa, one of the largest MDF and chipboard manufacturers in Europe.

STRAW and FRAME will be exhibited at the Cardiff Summer Exhibition on 16th June 2017.