AA alumnus and current tutor Thomas Faulkner has received a RIBA Dissertation Medal Commendation as part of the President’s Medals awards.

Faulkner’s dissertation, titled The Art of Getting By: From Domestic Abuse to Social Housing, questions two areas, the first, what role does architecture play in domestic abuse? And the second, what role is architecture able to play to support the process of recovery post-abuse?

The Part 2 dissertation posits, ‘It is architecture that provides the stage for domestic abuse; furthermore, it is architecture that provides the tools of violence for abuse. It is architecture that gives the abuser the privacy and power to perpetrate their violence and it is architecture that casts the characters of abuser, abused and the peripheral reticent neighbour. Therefore, it is imperative to recognise the significant role of the architecture of social housing within domestic abuse and consequently, the role it must play, following such incidents, to become an architectural antonym, transitioning the perception and application of the house from a place of violence, into a home of refuge.’

Image: The Art of Getting By: From Domestic Abuse to Social Housing. Courtesy of Thomas Faulkner