The AJ Student Prize is a platform that celebrates and supports the imaginative, rigorous work of both architecture students and schools across the UK.
With a spotlight on innovation and sustainability, Rafa’s project, The Tyneyards: Remembering the past, showcasing the future, reclaims and reimagines an industrial site in Wallsend once instrumental in the development of marine engines.
The scheme includes an exhibition of the advanced technology used in the port and logistics sectors across the River Tyne. This creates a linear journey that guides visitors from the industrial legacy of the region into its technological future. Alongside exhibition spaces, the project integrates community-focused programmes, including a café and adaptable gathering spaces. An industrially scarred site is transformed into active public realm that opens the river edge.
Further congratulations to Newcastle University postgraduate student Oliver Williamson, who has also been nominated for the prize and worked within the Material Change studio, tutored by FaulknerBrowns Senior Associate Architect Dan Burn.
Oliver was nominated for his Urban Rewilding in the Heart of Newcastle project, which transforms three disused post-war Brutalist structures surrounding Newcastle’s All Saints’ Church into an ecological sanctuary, reimagining Basil Spence’s incomplete 1960s masterplan.
