Prestigious award honours Oxford Brookes professor’s contribution to architectural education

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced Professor Jane Anderson as the winner of the 2024 RIBA Annie Spink Award.

The £10,000 award is presented every two years to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to architectural education in a higher education institution offering courses validated by RIBA. Professor Anderson, Programme Lead for Undergraduate Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, was praised by judges for an innovative, community-minded philosophy in which every first-year student starts with a community building project.

Professor Anderson said: “I am deeply honoured to accept the 2024 RIBA Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education. I am very grateful to colleagues who nominated me, to the RIBA and to the jury for their deliberations. 

“This award is really meaningful because I value education so highly as a force for good in society. Once I began teaching, I realised that the process of learning brings out the very best in humanity. Learners are striving to understand something that is just out of reach and gaining new skills along the way. Educators use all of their creativity and empathy to make meaning for others and encourage them to keep trying. When it works, it’s a perfect virtuous circle.” 

Professor Anderson is the Director of OB1 Live - a programme of live projects commissioned by community groups and designed by students at Oxford Brookes University’s School of Architecture. She is a co-founder of the Live Projects Network which allows users to search for case studies which demonstrate strategies for dealing with the range of opportunities and constraints in architectural projects. She is also the co-founder of the Design for the Common Good Network - a coalition dedicated to promoting change in design practices to amplify positive change in communities around the world. 

RIBA President Muyiwa Oki said: “Congratulations to Annie Spink Award winner Professor Jane Anderson, whose community-focused approach to teaching shows that every architect can be an agent of change and a force for good, shaping a better future for everyone.”

The RIBA Annie Spink Award is made possible by the Annie Spink Memorial Trust, bequeathed to the RIBA for the ‘advancement of architectural education’ by the estate of architect Herbert Spink FRIBA (1877-1967) as a lasting memorial to his wife Annie (1868-1938).