RIBA Commended Rūta Austriņa’s
Architectural Graduation Project to Design An Institute
Rūta Austriņa’s graduation project design of an imaginary space for Finnish Institute in London was highly commended in North East Student Award by RIBA, The Royal Institute of British Architects.
The Finnish institute in London has collaborated with Newcastle University and its graduating architecture students from the beginning of 2000. In the project the students design a hypothetical building for The Finnish Institute in London in Newcastle.
The Newcastle University nominated a shortlist of students for RIBA, which highly commended one of the course’s students Rūta Austriņa. RIBA’s review says: “Rūta collaborated with an aerial dancer to consider the movement of space in a highly contextualised building for The Finnish Institute. With a number of exceptional handcrafted models, the scheme was shown to be both well detailed and sophisticated in its spatial complexity.”
”I started the project by thinking of the Finnish Institute as a link between Finnish artists, scientists and creative workers and their counterparts in Great Britain and Ireland. The aim was to focus on fostering innovation and bringing these collaborators together. The idea behind the design is that a building is a meeting place not only for the collaborators from different cultures but also a vivid events location for the locals”, Ruta concludes.