It’s time to gear up for the RIBAJ MacEwen Award 2019. This is the award that recognises and celebrates ‘architecture for the common good’. We are looking for buildings and places demonstrating a clear social purpose, which enhance the lives of people rather than (or ideally as well as) just looking good. As with all the awards we run at RIBAJ, it is free to enter and aims to reach previously under-represented parts of the profession. Deadline is Monday 12 November, 2018.
It’s now the fourth year of MacEwen. Our first three winners were, starting in 2016: a relocated and reconfigured Segal-method building – offices-turned youth centre by then architecture students Benjamin Barfield Marks and Matt Atkins, in south London. This was followed in 2017 by another youth centre, but this time all-new, at Tadley in Hampshire by fast-rising practice Ayre Chamberlain Gaunt. Then early this year we declared the 2018 winner as the Meadow View community care centre outside Matlock in Derbyshire by Glancy Nicholls Architects.
We have also commended and shortlisted streetscape improvement schemes, ‘meanwhile uses’ on vacant land or in empty buildings, educational initiatives ranging from woodland schools to the annual ‘Scale Rule’ pavilion designed by school students; landscape improvements, advice centres, hostels and social housing, craft workshops, restored historic buildings and heritage centres.
Our entrants include well-known practices (we were the first to commend dRMM’s Hastings Pier, for instance, which went on to win the Stirling Prize) along with a lot of emerging small practices and design collaborations between architects, engineers, landscape designers and social enterprises.
The MacEwen Award is named after Anni and Malcolm MacEwen, she an urban planner who pioneered a conservation-based approach to regeneration in both town and country, he a campaigning journalist and former editor of this magazine. This year as last we are delighted to be supported by BDP, a hugely successful multi-discipline practice that has always been guided by a strong social ethos.
Rules
Projects must be in the UK, Ireland and islands such as Man and the Channel Islands. Projects must have been broadly physically completed within the two years to 1 November 2018, and must not have been entered previously for the MacEwen Award. A phase of a longer-term project is eligible.
Anyone including clients may enter a project, but the design team must have included an architect or architecture student.
The number of awards and commendations given will be at the judges’ discretion: shortlisted entries will be published on RIBAJ.com, culminating in the winners and commended entries appearing in the RIBA Journal February issue; those involved will be invited to a winners’ celebration lunch.
Entry details and required information
Entries should be submitted online only via the link below. The deadline for entry is Monday 12 November 2018, 23:59.
Please include the following information in you entry
- Name, location and description of project
- (300-500 words) explaining the beneficial social impact of the scheme
- Credit list of consultants and clients.
- Maximum of six images, to include photos and drawings.
