The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has today (Thursday 2 June 2023) opened applications for the 2023 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship.

The scholarship seeks to reward one outstanding architecture student and fund their travel to research the sustainable survival of cities and towns. The RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship offers one scholarship of £7,000 to a student of architecture to support international research on a topic and at locations of their choice.

Norman Foster, President of the Norman Foster Foundation, 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.’

The topic of the research should, however, relate to the sustainable survival of cities and fall under one of the following themes:

• Learning from the past to inform the future
• The future of society
• Density of settlements
• Use of resources
• Quality of urban life
• Transport

To be eligible to apply, students must be enrolled in, and have successfully completed at least the first year of a professional qualification in architecture from a school invited by the RIBA.

The deadline for submissions is 3pm (BST) Friday 30 June 2023. For more information visit www.architecture.com/fosterscholarship.

Past recipients of the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship:

2022: Hana Sapherson – Royal College of Art, UK – ‘Zero: direct air capture infrastructure and the future of zero carbon societies.’

2021: Weronika Zdziarska – Politecnico di Milano, Italy – ‘Don’t Stay Out Alone: addressing women’s perception of safety and freedom in cities by design.’

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