Christopher Kokarev, Jane Ching Yee Ling, Buster Ronngren, Russell Royer, Hafizah Nor, Efim Leonov & Matthew Ho

The seven recipients of the AA Diploma with Honours 2020 will discuss the process of how they each developed their projects, their choice of subject matter, site, media, position, audience as well as what receiving honours means to them.

AA Diploma Honours is the highest award you can achieve upon completion of the 5 year undergraduate programme. Up to one 5th year student per diploma unit is nominated to present for honours at the end of each academic year - a ten minute presentation that needs to convince the diploma tutors of the value, relevance and premise of the project.

Seven projects were awarded Diploma with Honours in 2019–20, manifesting the breadth of interests contained within the school from Efim’s ecosystem of small-scale farms across the British countryside to Chris’ network of public health sanctuaries that rise vertically to advocate for urban mental health, or Buster’s excavation of the Victoria Embankment that reveals the urban history of the Thames. Jane’s investigation into how hostility is designed into environments to differentiate between the citizen and the migrant sits alongside Matthew’s documentation of the life of an asylum seeker to show how London becomes a space of exclusion. Hafizah’s manual for a floating settlement in Brunei decolonises the act and narrative of settling whereas Russell’s decolonisation of museum collections uses performance to construct new cultural spaces and systems. Each project tackles urgent issues that question the ways in which we design, live and experience culture today.

Join the event on Zoom here.

Christopher Kokarev, Diploma Unit 1 - Vertical Asclepeions: Reinstalling an Architecture of Public Care

Jane Ching Yee Ling, Diploma Unit 3 - Hostile By Design

Buster Ronngren, Diploma Unit 11 - passage to a city when

Russell Royer, Diploma Unit 12 - The Choreum

Hafizah Nor, Diploma Unit 14 - Gotong-Royong: An Autonomous Floating Settlement in Brunei

Efim Leonov, Diploma Unit 15 - Farmorama

Matthew Ho, Diploma Unit 16 - Urban Nomadism - The City as a Space of Exclusion

You can watch their Honours presentations, read more about their 5th year projects and visit the augmented exhibition via instagram filter in advance of the talk by visiting the online Honours, Commendations, Prizes & Exemplary Projects 2019–20 exhibition.