On Wednesday 7 November the 20 projects in competition for RIBA House of the Year, sponsored by Forterra, will start being whittled down to the shortlist and final winner on Channel 4's Grand Designs: House of the Year. Make sure you tune in at 9pm on Wednesdays every week to find out the personal stories behind some of the UK's most amazing new homes. In the meantime, we introduce the five expert jury members with the mammoth task of selecting the 2018 RIBA House of the Year.
Takero Shimazaki
Jury Chair Takero Shimazaki is Director of Takero Shimazaki Architects (t-sa), founded in 1996 with Yuli Toh. The practice often works as a wider team, collaborating with designers, researches and photographers on projects. In 2016, they won a RIBA East Midlands award for Leicester Print Workshop.
Takero’s work has featured in many exhibitions and publications, and the practice is actively involved in education through an independent school set up by the practice in 2006. Takero has taught at the Architectural Association and is currently an external examiner at Cardiff and Cambridge.
Niall Maxwell
Niall Maxwell is Principal at Rural Office for Architecture, an award-winning architectural practice based in Wales.
Niall was the recipient of the 2017 RIBA House of the Year for Caring Wood, in partnership with James Macdonald Wright, a house that re-imagines the traditional English country house as a multi-generational home, in a design inspired by the oast houses of Kent.
Chantal Wilkinson
Chantal studied at the Royal College Art and is a principal of Wilkinson King Architects, a busy design based practice, which she runs with Julian King. The practice has won many architectural and RIBA National Awards including for Sussex House which was also shortlisted for House of the Year.
As well as serving on the 2018 RIBA House of the Year jury, Chantal is a member of the RIBA Awards Group. She is also member of the National Trust’s Historic Environments Advisory Group and a design advisor for Hackney Borough Council. She has taught architecture at undergraduate and post graduate levels at Cambridge, Kingston, and Syracuse University, London Program.
Laura Mark
Laura Mark is Keeper at Walmer Yard, and also works as an architecture critic and designer.
Laura worked in practice for five years before joining the Architects Journal. She was named IBP Multi-media Journalist of the Year (2015) and was shortlisted for PPA New Section Editor of the Year (2016), PPA New Business Journalist of the Year (2015 and 2014) and IBP Young Journalist of the Year (2013). Before joining Walmer Yard, Laura set up the Architecture Awards at the Royal Academy.
Paul Rogatzki
Dr Paul Rogatzki is a Chartered Engineer and a leading authority in the building products industry, with four decades’ experience in the sector. He is Technical Consultant at UK building product giant Forterra, where he has worked for 32 years, and is a former President of the International Masonry Society.
Paul gained his PhD from the University of Surrey in 2014 for his studies on the development of in-situ and prefabricated masonry processes using high performance mortars, a subject he continues to research along with many others, in the service of Forterra and the construction industry as a whole.
