Left to right: Teegan Isola, Julia Masureik, Nicole Duncan and Sharon Ho who presented for her team at the conference. 

In December 2017, three first-year architectural studies students presented a paper at an international conference hosted by the Faculty of Architecture Research Unit (FARU) at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. Their paper titled “Bringing water to new heights,” received a commended student paper award.

The theme of the conference was “Design that Cares” – multi-disciplinary approaches to creating sustainable and meaningful built environments. The students, Nicole Duncan, Julia Masureik and Teegan Isola, investigated supplying individual homes of an informal settlement with a clean source of water. The aim of their concept is to improve both the social and physical challenges which the citizens of informal settlements face by providing them with a service that many people take for granted; water.

Nicole Duncan said, “As an undergrad, it seemed totally out of reach to get into an international architectural conference. The exposure to new ways of thinking and insightful research of highly experienced people is invaluable & truly inspiring to me.”
 
Nicole added that apart from the beautiful place, people and the incredible learning that took place, their presentation ended up exceeding their expectations. Not only did they come back winning commended student paper, but their paper will also be published in a FARU publication in July, and in a second book reserved for prize-winning papers.
 
“We feel it was a wonderful credit to Jan Schabert, as a lecturer and advisor, as well as to the Architecture school in general - and hopefully undergraduate students can see this as an achievable goal in the future.”