RIBA Norman Foster travelling scholarship

"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." Lord Norman Foster

The RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship offers one scholarship of £9,000 to a student of architecture to support international research on a topic and at locations of their choice.

The topic of the research should, however, relate to the sustainable survival of cities and fall under one of the following themes:

learning from the past to inform the future
the future of society
density of settlements
use of resources
quality of urban life
transport

2025 winner

The recipient of the 2025 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship is Arham Khan from the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Technology, India, for his project ‘Clouds without Rain’.

Arham’s project focuses on data centres and their hidden environmental impact on resources, energy and local communities. The six key data centers his research will examine are all from the global south with one exception: Ashburn, VA (USA); São Paulo (Brazil); Nairobi (Kenya); Manila (Philippines); Chennai and Mumbai (India).

In addition to determining the scholar, the judging panel commended the entries:

‘Emergent Informal Ecologies: Considering alternate ways of living that derive and respond to the overconsumption of resources and the excess of ‘waste’’ by Theodore Galvin nominated by the Norwich University of the Arts (UK)
‘Drowning Cities’ by Jana Sami nominated by the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport – Cairo campus (Egypt)
‘Learning from Conflict-Affected Urban Landscapes’ by Līna Nijazi nominated by the Riga Technical University (Latvia).

The 2025 judging panel comprised:

Norman Foster, Lord Foster of Thames Bank (Founder and Executive Chairman, Foster + Partners; President, Norman Foster Foundation)
David Jenkins (Publisher, Circa Press; Trustee, Norman Foster Foundation;)
Muyiwa Oki (RIBA President 2023 to 2025; Senior Architectural Manager, Mace)
Sumita Singha OBE Dr (hc) (Founding Director, Ecologic Architects; Educator; Author; Trustee, Commonwealth Association of Architects; RIBA Councillor and Board Member)
Richard Dilworth (Equity Partner, Foster + Partners; Trustee, Norman Foster Foundation),
Narinder Sagoo MBE (Senior Partner, Foster + Partners).

Eligibility criteria and application process

To be eligible to apply, students must be enrolled in, and have successfully completed at least the first year of a professional qualification (RIBA Part 1 or Part 2 or equivalent) in architecture from a school invited by RIBA (PDF). Individuals enrolled in postgraduate academic qualifications such as Masters or PhDs are not eligible to apply for this scholarship.

Please note that nominations for this scholarship are made by the schools of architecture invited (and countersigned by the head of school) and not directly by individual students, as we only accept one application per school.

The next application cycle will start in the Spring of 2026. If you wish to apply, we recommend that you contact your head of school and express your interest in being nominated.

Contact

If you have any questions about the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship, please contact us at student.support@riba.org.

​RIBA Norman Foster travelling scholarship

2025 winner

Eligibility criteria and application process

Contact

Previous RIBA Norman Foster Scholars:

RIBA Norman Foster travelling scholarship