The Best Student Drawings of 2018 Awarded by the Aarhus School of Architecture

First Prize: Penang 2095 / Tianjing Lim (Malaysia) from Dessau International School of Architecture . Image via Aarhus School of Architecture

Written by Niall Patrick Walsh
Published on December 03, 2018

The Aarhus School of Architecture has revealed the winners of their drawing competition, Drawing of the Year 2018, which asked architecture students around the globe to submit their best digital, hand-drawn or hybrid drawings under the theme of “Shaping new Realities.”

The jury was impressed by the “level of the many submitted drawings, which combine many different techniques and methods and show a high level of complexity and quality.” The assigned theme generated a wide variety of responses, from dystopia to green futures, exhibiting an “engaged, intelligent, informed” understanding of architectural thought and representation.

More than 300 submissions from 70 countries were evaluated by an esteemed jury of architects, which consisted of Peter Cachola Schmal, director of Deutsches Architekturmuseum; Thomas Bossel, associate partner at schmidt hammer lassen; and Torben Nielsen, professor at Aarhus School of Architecture.

First Prize

Penang 2095 / Tianjing Lim (Malaysia) from Dessau International School of Architecture

Drawing Description: It looks like a growing tower, a factory, but when you move closer, urban life is revealed. It is a vertical village, based on a reading of the existing organization and layout of the city structure and architecture. But instead of choosing sides, the old or the new, it builds on the contradiction, and the drawing proposes an organic approach. This approach uses building technology to create the continuously adaptive growth of the tower based on the exciting heritage.

Second Prize

All at Sea / Matt Breton-Honeyman, Amélie Savoie-Saumure, and Pascale Julien (Canada) from McGill School of Architecture

Drawing Description: It is not a drawing of a rollercoaster, Tivoli, a circus or an oil platform. A closer look at this “graphically strong and well-composed drawing” reveals a border crossing between Israel and Jordan. It demonstrates the selective process of dividing humans into nationalities shaped by politically constructed territories and the instruments of controlling and surveying. Everything looks friendly and trivial but is highly political and with the military constantly present.

Third Prize

A Day in Global Britain: A Christmas Gift to a Dear Friend in Memory of a Summer Day /
Jason Ho (United Kingdom), The Bartlett School of Architecture

Jury Description: The jury compliments this drawing as a cheerful yet bold and provocative suggestion … The close-up of the architectural inventions, the shifts between time speeds in the story almost create a storyboard for a movie. The drawing becomes four-dimensional. The line is almost naive, and humorous. It evokes feelings and makes us engage in the many-layered drawing.