Architecture

Tamsin Hanke’s project on Magnitogorsk (pictured top), a Stalin-era Russian settlement built entirely around the steel industry, focused on building a platform for the city’s economic and cultural diversification. Hanke gained experience at offices such as Michaelis Boyd Associates and Undercover Architecture and has now been snapped up by Niall McLaughlin Architects. www.tamsinhanke.co.uk

These young architects are laying solid foundations for their bright futures, exploring space and surface in fresh new ways

Writer: Ellie Stathaki

Kiyonori Sugiyama came top of his class and won the 2013 award for his graduation thesis in engineering. Inspired to study architecture by his father’s books and the work of Arne Jacobsen, Sugiyama is also influenced by Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia and Saint Benedict’s Chapel by Peter Zumthor. In fact churches seem to be his main fascination; his thesis, Church on a Field, revolves around religious building design. amasisoho1@yahoo.co.jp

Alessia Catellani and Tess Walraven’s award-winning student work culminated with their final year thesis, completed with supervision from professors Harry Gugger and Dieter Dietz. The pair scooped the esteemed 2013 Arditi Award with their project, Zurich Stories: Scenarios of Intensification, which revolves around the densification and ‘intensification’, of two centrally located sites in the Swiss town. catellani.alessia@gmail.com; tesswalraven2@gmail.com

Anders Liisberg Larsen excelled with his final thesis project, which involved the restoration of an old farmhouse in rural Denmark (pictured). The project led to two Danish prizes, the VOLA and the Icopal, as well as a desk at Henning Larsen Architects. The graduate has also formed a collective, Stuen Architects, with eight of his fellow students. www.stuenarchitects.com

After work experience at practices such as SCAU and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Cyril Chabaud hopes to turn his thesis ‘into something real’. His project, A catalogue for the new builders of Ouagadougou (pictured), revolves around the densification of housing in the Burkina Faso capital, based on his work experience in the African city. www.issuu.com/cyril.chabaud

Czech-born Ondrej Janku’s well-researched final thesis on urbanism and the future of Moscow’s urban planning led to a highly praised graduation project from the Strelka Institute last year. Janku’s portfolio also includes a winning team entry to the 2013 Tallinn Architecture Biennale’s urban design competition, and a project (pictured) exploring the use, qualities and appearance of caravanserai, an Islamic equivalent of the motel. www.assembledground.wix.com/ondrej-janku

With degrees in architecture and engineering and a background in anthropology and sustainable development, Laura Myllyluoma is a real multitasker. And with work experience at Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma and the manufacturer Velux, she’s off to an exciting start. Myllyluoma is influenced by Nordic and Japanese architecture and hopes to combine her architecture with art, urbanism and anthropology. ‘I’ve also been influenced by smaller Tokyo-based offices, like Atelier Bow-Wow, with strong social awareness,’ she says. lauramyllyluoma@hotmail.com

Gezim Bono’s ‘Fleabite’ Effect project (pictured) is a critical examination of knowledge formation, researching the elements that will shape tomorrow’s education spaces. His plans for his own future are well-defined. ‘I would like to open a virtual architecture office based on an open-source platform,’ he says. gezimbono@hotmail.com

Li Sanjian is partial to hand-drawn architecture. ‘I’ve used this method throughout my undergraduate period,’ she explains. Her thesis project, Wall by Newspaper, is similarly ‘analogue’ in its approach, creating architectural spaces using old newspapers. lisanjian@udg.com.cn

Natalie Kwee is drawn to Japanese architects. ‘Their approaches to scale, light, material, inside/outside all seem so natural,’ she says. Her thesis project, Idiosyncracities (pictured), explores the genealogy of Japanese housing, while proposing a new residential typology. www.nataliekwee.com

After graduating with a wealth of honours and prizes for her academic work, Sarah Frances Gill began work as a designer for Heatherwick Studio in London. Her Broad Museum Redux project (pictured), completed at Yale, called for museum exhibition space as well as significant storage room. The result is an exploration of nested or interlocking volumes. issuu.com/sarahfgill

Award-winning honours graduate Alice Labourel combines design with academia and has taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture. She is inspired by architectural drawing – ‘Lebbeus Woods’ drawings depict a world between reality and fantasy’ - and architects who have managed to build their forward-thinking ideas, ‘like Arakawa and Gins, whose buildings stimulate people’s minds and bodies’. Currently employed at Will Alsop’s All Design, Labourel aims to one day set up her own practice. www.alicelabourel.com

It was Bauhaus teachings that introduced Andras Dankhazi to architecture, along with the work of Herzog & de Meuron, where ‘there’s always something happening inside the filigree between the insulation and façade,’ he says. ‘This excited me because I started seeing the possibility of combining materials.’ Dankhazi earned awards for his thesis design of a desalination plant, salt-marsh garden and baths in Dublin’s Poolbeg area, a commentary on the city’s looming water crisis. www.dankhazi.com

‘Growing up in a small town, I always saw architects as central to community development,’ says Emily Baxter. ‘I love the idea that architecture shapes space and how people interact with it, and with each other.’ Since completing her masters thesis with the design of a performing-arts theatre, she has interned at New York’s Situ Studio, where she worked on the design of site-specific, performance-based installations. emily.baxter@mail.mcgill.ca

South Korean Chang-Yeob Lee completed an interior architecture degree from Seoul’s Hanyang University before earning his MA last year. His thesis exploring the transformation of Marylebone’s BT tower (‘one of London’s most polluted areas’) into a hybrid vertical oil field and research laboratory won him the school’s Sheppard Robson Student Prize. Lee is currently a Part II architectural assistant at Studio Heatherwick in London. changyeob.lee@network.rca.ac.uk

‘San Francisco’s Embarcadero is fascinating in the way it generates a 24-hour-access public space within a seemingly banal corporate centre,’ says Jeremy Jacinth, whose interest in public spaces marks his work. Winning the RSA’s US Student Design Competition earned Jacinth a job at Grimshaw Architects in London, but upon graduation he plans to leave for Sacramento in California ‘to start up a research centre investigating small-scale infrastructure that encourages intelligent urban growth’. www.jeremyjacinth.wix.com

Julian Trachsel’s thesis Interior and Monument won the Heinrich Hatt-Bucher Prize and the SIA-Diploma Award from the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects. ‘Architectural design is always in a historical context,’ he says. ‘By using references as design tools we can position our own work within the historical course of events.’ Traschel works as an assistant to architect Adam Caruso, of Caruso St John, while setting up his own practice, Kontor Architektur. www.kontorarchitekten.ch

Beginning her higher education in fine art, Ja Kyung Kim was eventually won over by architecture. She received the 2013 Diploma Honours for her thesis examining the no-man’s land between North and South Korea from the perspective of Korean women. Rem Koolhaas’s Exodus had a deep influence on Kim’s work, as did her tutors, Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda of Amid Cero9. ‘They never give up and always attempt new things.’ hinair@hotmail.com