ZCD and Jan Kattein scoop youth-focused accolades

ZCD Architects, Jan Kattein Architects and Curl La Tourelle Head are among the practices collecting awards in a programme that champions work to empower young people to shape the built environment.

Thornton Education Trust’s Inspire Future Generations Awards bring together more than a dozen categories that reflect different age groups and goals. Ryder Architecture, Askew Cavanna and David Miller Architects also received recognition for projects

ZCD won the awards’ “research” category for its work on a project to make the Chingford Mount area of east London more child-friendly. It was also named “best built environment practice” for the focus it has placed on working with young people, organising workshops for hundreds of children and youths over the past four years.

Jan Kattein Architects won one of the awards’ “school collaborations” categories for its work with young people on play space in Thamesmead, south-east London.

Bristol-based Askew Cavanna Architects won the “one-off programme: youth” category for a project that involved young people in the co-design of a new community centre, beating AHMM, which had been shortlisted for a project related to 66 Portland Place.

Ryder Architecture won the “further education/higher education” category for its Plan Bee higher-level skills programme.

David Miller Architects picked up the “online resources” award in recognition of its Virtual Design Academy programme, which provided work experience for disadvantaged young people during the Covid lockdowns.

Curl la Tourelle Head Architects won the “diversity in action” category of the awards for its Art of Inhabitation project with young care-leavers in Newham, east London. The programme aimed to help young people move into and look after their flats, as well as teaching them how to measure rooms, draw scaled elevations, and think about materials, colours, textures and light.

Awards judge and TET trustee Neil Pinder said 2022 had been a vintage year for entries to the programme.

“Submissions this year were outstanding and show how children and young people are increasingly being given agency in their own built environment,” he said.