University of Portsmouth Sustainability Prize

Date posted: July 16, 2019

Now in the 16th year, the ArchitecturePLB sustainability prize for Masters students, at University of Portsmouth’s School of Architecture, gives us an opportunity to enjoy the work of the Graduating cohort whilst reflecting on the designs. The prize seeks to celebrate, challenge and explore concepts of sustainability. The work and focus of units did not disappoint, with a strong year on display.

Projects included large scale masterplans, food-production, urban intensification, and later-living. We saw homes for bees, buildings which use bio-mimetic slime, botanical gardens, and regeneration at a large and small scale.

This annual prize gives the opportunity to debate sustainability, its meaning and whether it should be a ‘special prize’. It is a few years since the sustainability unit came to an end at Portsmouth, which acknowledges that by now all projects should have sustainability at their heart, not least due to the climate emergency and extensive knowledge of how we need to respond. Maybe it is time to consider whether the prize should simply be for good architecture?

Three projects shone out for us, and like last year we have given an honourable mention, this year to Ida Rorvik- Norwegian forest research centre. We picked two winners this year; Samuel Akakpo’s eco-sanctuary in Ghana, for the scale and ambition of the project, and Paul Moss, for his community project at Cody Dock, where he had really got into the detail and richness of the program. Congratulations to all graduating students for some really great work.