UM Student Is First Asian Woman to Win International Architecture Award, Beating Thousands of Participants


Another awesome Malaysian has done the country proud by nabbing a prestigious award! Siti Nurafaf Ismail has won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship this year, making her the first Asian woman to be bestowed with that honour.

This scholarship is now in its 13th year, having first started in 2006. The 21-year-old Siti Nurafaf, or known as Afaf to her friends, is an architecture student at the University of Malaya. The award means that Afaf gets a £7,000 (RM36,989) scholarship so she can go on a period of international research about the sustainable survival of cities and towns.

She managed to beat thousands of other hopeful students thanks to her project known as the ‘Architecture of Humility’. Her winning project is based on the role of the architect within community architecture in natural disaster zones, for which she managed to travel to Lombok, Indonesia in January. This historic win of the 2019 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship will enable her to continue her research in Hokkaido and Karachi, two cities which have been destroyed by recent natural disasters.

According to SCMP, her project impressed the judges so much that she was chosen for the award and will be spending 60 days each in Hokkaido and Karachi to document and observe the work done to rebuild the devastated communities there. Afaf will also be observing two illustrious architects as well, the award-winning Shigeru Ban and Pakistan’s first female architect, Yasmeen Lari.

Both of these famous architects have made their mark in the industry and Afaf wants to follow in their footsteps by specialising in disaster management after she graduates.

She said, “As architects, we are trained to build houses for well-off people or public buildings. In [disaster-prone] communities, we need to look at structures in a different way, including the materials and foundations. Each place is unique. What works in Malaysia might not necessarily work in Pakistan, so architects in those locations need to stand up – they know the people best.”

Congrats Afaf and we wish you all the best!  - WOB

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