The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has today (Monday 29 March 2021) opened applications for the 2021 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship.

The scholarship seeks to reward one architecture student and fund their travel to explore the sustainable survival of cities and towns.

This year, in response to global travel restrictions, students can alternatively submit a proposal to research a topic in their home country. Applications are welcomed from students around the world and a £7,000 grant will be awarded to the winner, decided by a panel of judges including Lord Foster and RIBA President Alan Jones.

Lord Foster said:

‘As a student I won a prize that allowed me to spend a summer travelling through Europe and to study first hand buildings and cities that I knew only from the pages of books. It was a revelation – liberating and exhilarating in so many ways. Today it is the privilege of the Norman Foster Foundation to support the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship, which I hope will have a lasting legacy – offering the chance for discovery and the inspiration for exciting new work – for generations to come’.

RIBA President Alan Jones added:
‘The annual Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship gives aspiring architects the chance to carry out important research, addressing global challenges and the sustainable future of our towns and cities. Students need our support now more than ever, and we are very grateful to the Norman Foster Foundation for their ongoing generosity to make this grant possible’.

Applications are open to students who are enrolled in, or have successfully completed, the first year of a professional qualification in architecture, in one of the higher education institutions invited to participate.

The deadline for submissions is 17:00 (GMT) Friday 28 May 2021. For more information visit:
www.architecture.com/fosterscholarship

Past recipients of the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship:

2020: Iulia Cistelecan – London School of Architecture – ‘Life Between Shelters: Refugee camps of today becoming cities of tomorrow’

2019: Siti Nurafaf Ismail – University of Malaya, Malaysia – ‘Architecture of Humility’

2018: Steven Hutt – University of Greenwich, UK – ‘East of Eden’

2017: Chloe Loader – University of Lincoln, UK – ‘Emerging Cities: Sustainable Master-Planning in the Global South’

2016: Abel Feleke – University of Western Australia – ‘Weaving the Urban Fabric: Examining the Significance of Community’

2015: Charles Palmer – University of Sheffield, UK – ‘Cycling Megacities’

2014: Joe Paxton – Bartlett (UCL), UK – ‘Buffer Landscapes 2060

2013: Sigita Burbulyte – Bath University, UK – ‘Charles Booth Going Abroad’

2012: Thomas Aquilina – University of Edinburgh –  ‘Material Economies: Recycling Practices in Informal Settlements Along African Longitude 30’  2011: Sahil Bipin Deshpande – Rizvi College of Architecture, India –  ‘Sanitation: A Case Study across Eight Metropolises’

2010: Andrew Mackintosh – Robert Gordon University, UK – ‘In Search of Cold Spaces’

2009: Amanda Rivera – University of Bio Bio, Chile – ‘Ancestral Cities, Ancestral Sustainability’

2008: Faizan Jawed Siddiqi – Rizvi College of Architecture, India – ‘The Role of Public Transport in Shaping Sustainable Humane Habitats’

2007: Ben Masterton-Smith – Bartlett, UK –  ‘Emerging East: Exploring and Experiencing the East Asian Communist City’.

Image: Weaving the Urban Fabric: Examining the Significance of Community © Abel Feleke – 2016 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship recipient