• 10 Oct 2019

RIAI Student Awards 2019

The RIAI is delighted to announce the RIAI Student Awards 2019. With the support of our sponsors Forbo, Scott Tallon Walker Architects, Equitone from Tegral and Xtratherm we have been able to award prizes worth over €15,000 to the students. Congratulations to the Category Winners – Alannah O’Reilly (TUD); Clodagh Cloughlan (SAUL); Eric Tai (IT Carlow); and Megan Quirey (UCD) – and the shortlisted students, who all received prizes.  The RIAI Student Awards were presented by RIAI President David Browne and RIAI CEO Kathryn Meghen at the RIAI Conference 2019 on Saturday 5 October in the RDS.

RIAI Rising Star in Architectural Technology Award

Sponsor: Xtratherm
Winner: Eric Tai (IT Carlow)  

Citation:  Education Building at IT Carlow
The student showed an excellent understanding of the brief and enthusiastically addressed all issues.  There was a strong engagement with the selected building and a very extensive review of environmental systems for heating and cooling of the building.  Technical information was sufficiently prescriptive and there was a good selection of 3D and 2D views to describe the solutions being used.

Highly Commended: Christopher Curran (LyIT)

Jury: Fergal O’Connell, Michael Early and Liam Innes

RIAI Student Award for Sustainable Design

Sponsor: Equitone from Tegral
Winner: Alannah O’Reilly (TUD)

Citation: Limerick City Craft School
A range of sustainable design principles are embedded throughout the project, with a comprehensive approach taken to the presentation and analysis of each aspect,  including energy calculations and application of rules of thumb to evaluate the design in terms of holistic sustainability.

The presentation displayed a consideration of site analysis (including wind and  flooding), daylight requirements, ventilation strategy (including heat recovery), building  fabric,  selection and use of sustainable materials and their thermal performance and embodied energy and renewable energy potential and calculation.

Highly Commended: Kayleigh Colgan (QUB) 
Highly Commended: Helen McFadden (TUD) 

Jury: Sarah O’Dwyer, Natalie Walsh and Darragh Lynch.

RIAI & Architecture Ireland Student Writing Prize

Sponsor: Forbo
Winner: Clodagh Cloughlan (SAUL)  Essay Title: ‘ Being There’

Citation: ‘Being there’ is a poetic response to one of the masterpieces by land artist James Turrell – ‘Sky Garden’ at Lis Ard Estate outside Skibbereen in West Cork. Clodagh wrote the piece “to understand a meditative experience; and to communicate the relationship between conscious thought, scale, materiality and the movement of the body”. In her evocative poem, she has beautifully recreated a journey of mind and body through the incredible space that is Sky Garden. The poem offers a highly sensory experience as we follow the poet’s eyes, ears, touch and breath on their journey through thick woodland, a dark tunnel, a deep crater … and into the light.

Highly Commended: Patrick Brennan (TUD), Essay Title: ‘The Courtyard’
Highly Commended: Sean Nolan (TUD), Essay Title: ‘Offaly’
Commended: Aisling Madden (QUB), Essay Title: ‘Surburbia as an Incubator of Arts and Culture’
Commended: Megan Quirey (UCD), Essay Title: ‘An Architectural Fairy-Tale. The Tale of Dublin Port’

Jury: Stephen Best; Michael Hayes; Ellen Rowley and Sandra O’Connell.

RIAI Scott Tallon Walker Student Excellence Award in Architecture

Sponsor: Scott Tallon Walker Architects
Winner: Megan Quirey (UCD)

Citation:  A Tower in Temple Bar
This entry has a wonderful magical quality which emanates the exquisite drawings  and powerful graphics drawing you into an imagined world.  A tower in Temple Bar is created as a ‘meeting point for hope and care’ a center for victims of abuse.  A rich  diversity of spaces are wound into a tower that rises above the city, creating spaces for  people to ‘build new stories’.  The result is an enticing, sophisticated exploration of themes which reaches far beyond the initial premise of the project.

Highly Commended: Jennifer Whittaker (QUB)
Commended: Sam Le Bas (UCD)

Jury: David Cahill, (Representative STW), Clare White and Clare Healy.