Professor Jeremy Till, Dean of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster, has won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Award for Outstanding University-located Research for the third time in five years. Professor Till is the only person to have been awarded the prestigious international award on three occasions.

Professor Till’s 2011 winning project, Spatial Agency,was conducted together with Dr. Tatjana Schneider from the University of Sheffield and proposed alternative ways of approaching architecture. The research collected over 150 inspiring examples of how people have applied spatial intelligence beyond designing a building alone. The case studies ranged from activism to pedagogy, publications to networking, making stuff to making policy, showing that spatial agency can radically expand the normal boundaries of architecture.

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This third award establishes Professor Till’s position as one of the world’s leading architectural researchers. Chosen from a shortlist of entries from the University of Cambridge, University of Nottingham, Queen’s University Belfast and The Bartlett, University College London, Till and Schneider’s project was based on work funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The RIBA judging panel praised the winning project, saying: “Describing a series of case-study projects that are marginal to the mainstream activities of the architectural profession, unofficial and informal practices, this is a timely study; it raises issues that are vital for the future.”

Professor Till said: “The term ‘spatial agency’ which came out the project has already been taken up in architectural circles, showing how ground-breaking research can have an impact on professional and cultural life, and confirming our view that the need to establish alternatives to mainstream practice has never been more pressing.”

The project was documented in a book, Spatial Agency, published by Routledge and a website, spatialagency.net, which has received close to 200,000 unique visitors.

(CD/GK)