AA Diploma Honours is the highest award you can achieve upon completion of the 5 year 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 their project.
Four projects were awarded Diploma with Honours in 2020-21, manifesting the breadth of interests contained within the school; Jumanah’s project creates a new platform to produce an alternative Palestinian narrative that reframes the identity of the diasporic community through their collective memories, rituals and practices. Philip responds to the different crises that are currently ravaging the city of Beirut, rethinking the nature of infrastructures of care by building a network of decentralised interventions on small inconstructible parcels dispersed across the urban fabric. Shaha’s project tries to reconnect the people of the area of the Bekaa through secular means, identifying the fabric of the land itself as the unifying feature to be rediscovered. Zaina explores the implications of the Kafala system within the architecture and urban environment of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, working to speak alongside rather than speak about a population that has not been heard.
The four recipients of the AA Diploma with Honours 2021 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.
To read more about the projects, please visit the following links:
JUMANAH BAWAZIR
Diploma Unit 12
HAQ: Project 73 – A Reframing of Palestine https://pr2021.aaschool.ac.uk/students/jumanah-naj…
PHILIP GHARIOS
Diploma Unit 9
In the Name of Resilience – Crises, Care, and Civic Infrastructures in Beirut https://pr2021.aaschool.ac.uk/students/philip-nazi…
SHAHA RAPHAEL
Diploma Unit 17
أرضي صلي ÙŠ, earth bound https://pr2021.aaschool.ac.uk/students/shaha-maria…
ZAINA SWEIDAN
Diploma Unit 13
The Invisible Core
To view all of the Honours Presentations, please follow the below link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgclHYwF-uA&t=2146s&ab_channel=AASchoolofArchitecture
