Thomas Corrie, a recent graduate of the University of Sheffield school of Architecture has received a HIGH COMMENDATION in the President’s Medals 2006 (Link to President’s Medals site) for his dissertation ‘Treading in the Path of Others’ which was supervised by Eamonn Canniffe. Thomas, who was part of the M.Arch Studio 6 ‘In the footsteps of the Party of Beauty’ which Eamonn ran with Dominic Roberts and Robert Evans in the 2004-5 academic year designed a hotel for grand tourists on the Tiber Island in Rome and continued his interest in eighteenth century architecture with his dissertation study on Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire (pictured above), and the origins of its motifs in the ancient sites of the Roman world. Thomas’s study was funded by a travel scholarship from the West Yorkshire Society of Architects and the Sir Henry Stephenson Travel Scholarship of Sheffield University, enabling him to retrace Robert Adam’s Grand Tour in Italy and Croatia. The resulting dissertation was described by Tom Dyckhoff, the architecture critic at The Times and a member of the judging panel, as ‘a rattling good story’. Since graduation in the summer of 2006 Thomas Corrie has been working at Hopkins Architects on a project for Yale University.
The President’s Medals site includes a short movie about the dissertation, and footage of the well attended awards ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects.
At the start of the award ceremony the Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education was presented to Dr. Dalibor Vesely. Although the citation mentioned his contribution to the University of Essex, the Architectural Association, and the University of Cambridge, it should be noted that Dr. Vesely is currently Honorary Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Manchester School of Architecture.