Our annual art challenge returned for its fourth year in 2021. With a record number of entries, we had submissions kindly donated by our talented staff from all of our eight studios.
We hosted an exhibition in Manchester, with an online art auction running alongside to raise money for two charities close to our heart – Marudyan (providing education to below poverty line children in India) and Macmillan Cancer Support. We’re still calculating the exact total but it’s looking like we’ve raised around £1,800 from the auction and raffle.
As well as raising money for charity, the art challenge is a competition with a top prize of £500. The brief this year was ‘the art of architecture, transforming the everyday role of the architecture into art.’
1st place position – the Roger FitzGerald prize (named after ADP Fellow who acted as one of our judges and founded the challenge in 2018 )- went to Manchester architect Alex MacBeth. Alex describes his unique piece as “an abstraction of its name sake by David Bowie, the feather-like image is a visualisation of the different sound waves throughout the song ‘Thru’ these Architects eyes’. Each strand represents a different audio frequency, growing, twisting and distorting based on the rises and falls in amplitude as the song progresses to create a pattern unique to the song.”
The judges said: “Simply an exquisitely beautifully and elegant image derived from a digital process, frankly beyond the knowledge of the judges.”
In 2nd place was a vibrant illustration by our Healthcare director Chris Thornton called Anything and Everything. And in 3rd place, another Manchester architect Kristian Abrahamsen with his stunning drawing of the Manchester Skyline.
There were also two submissions that were commended by the judges – Tom White, impact and comms executive who submitted a skilful concrete poem and Ben Wallis Oxford associate director for his beautifully composed photo .
We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved and we look forward to next year!
