Mark Wilson-Jones on the TAG Awards 2022
The TAG Annual Awards evening on Friday 18th November was a buzzing full-house event. Significantly more entries were submitted for the competitive Awards than ever before in TAG’s 20 years history, especially from students. Besides the continuing rise in TAG’s numbers and a progressively greater proportion of younger members, this shows an increasing appreciation of the value of history and precedent amongst those aiming to become architects.
As the TAG chairman, Mark Wilson Jones, announced, “It’s really encouraging to note the range of institutions educating the students who submitted to the Measured Drawings and Student Project categories. These include diverse universities in the UK: of the Creative Arts (Canterbury), of Greenwich, of Kingston (London), of London South Bank, of Northumbria, of Sheffield, and even UCL (Bartlett School of Architecture); in Ireland the Dublin Institute of Technology; in the United States, the Universities of Utah Valley and Notre Dame, and finally, in Japan, the Yokohama National University.” Wilson Jones, who teaches history, theory and studio at the University of Bath and who recently founded Apollodorus Architecture, went on to observe “This mirrors my own experience teaching at Bath, where a recent lecture on the case for continuity and tradition to the final year of the BSc programme was received far and away better than I would have dared hoped some years ago. This is a rare kind of climate change that is positive.”
The character of the work that received commendations and prizes demonstrated that TAG’s sympathies are far from being limited to style, ornament, egg-and-dart and so on. The competitive awards went as follows:
TAG 2022 Measured Drawing Prize (open internationally, worth £500): Nathan Walz (University of Notre Dame)
TAG 2022 Best Student Project (UK only, worth £1000): George Davis (University of Kingston).
Rendering, George Davis
The TAG 2022 Award for a Member’s Built Project went to a Georgian townhouse remodelling in Hoxton, London by Timothy Smith & Jonathan Taylor LLP; the award was received by their colleague Lauren Drummond given their absence due to teaching in the USA.
Photo credit ©Anthony Coleman.
The formalities ended with a Lifetime Achievement Award to Robert (Bob) Adam in recognition of a singularly robust contribution to traditional architecture. His multitalented energy is manifest in everything from books and a plethora of essays and journalistic articles to prize-winning buildings and masterplans, all the while nurturing the careers of younger architects through the practices he has directed, and tirelessly promoting the cause of tradition in the wider world. An outstanding achievement all round, which the gathering went on to celebrate, along with all the other prizes, in the congenial reception rooms of the Artworkers Guild in Queen Square, London.
As Mark Wilson Jones summed up the evening: “It seems to many of us that the mutual or perceived antagonism between ‘modernists’ and ’traditionalists’ of yesteryear has become rather outdated. Several notable contemporary architects' use of the past is no longer a mere nod, nor loaded with postmodern irony. Masterplanning up and down the UK frequently returns to streets, squares and legible urban patterns. There are many thriving traditional practices, growing in size too. History is no longer to be shunned, and any thinking architect understands that the tabula rasa notion only has value as a didactic tool, and is hardly to be taken literally.”