Prize giving by Ibstock for first year design project
The current first year students celebrated the end of their studio teaching this week with a
prize giving ceremony from project sponsor
Ibstock. 
The challenge was to design a bespoke live-work dwelling with a particular profession in mind, using Ibstock’s wide range of clay based products as materials.
Ian Lander, Territory Manager and Martin Smithurst, Technical Manager presented two first prizes
from the £500 prize money kindly donated by Ibstock for ‘overall design’ and ‘detailed design’.
They commented on how high the standard of work was, particularly considering the students were so
early on in their studies, and how difficult it was to get their long list of 20 design schemes
down to the final eight - the two first prizes and three runners-up in each category.
Students began the year with a visit to Ibstock’s Cattybrook production plant near Bristol to understand the whole two day process of brick making from quarrying to forming and firing. The students were asked to celebrate the heavy-weight nature of masonry construction qualities in their design. As Louis Kahn, the seminal 20th Century Architect, would have said, “They should ask the brick what it wants to be.”
The winners, Kit Chan for overall design, and Rhiona Williams for detailed design both
demonstrated imaginative interpretations of how a 21st Century live-work dwelling might be created,
and pushed the definitions of the brief to create well-crafted and spatially rich solutions.
The department wishes to thank Ibstock for its on-going support throughout the undergraduate programme, starting with this first year prize and continuing through to the sponsored third year overseas trip, mostly recently visiting Malta, Istanbul and Berlin.
