Bartlett Alumnus Awarded 2023 SAHGB Dissertation Prize

The Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain (SAHGB) has announced winners of the 2023 SAHGB Awards, including recent Bartlett graduate Eliot Haworth (Architectural History MA, 2023). 

The Bartlett’s Architectural History MA is the UK’s longest established degree in the historical, theoretical and critical interpretation of architecture, cities, urban spaces, creative practices and their representations.

About the prize

The SAHGB’s internationally prestigious awards programme celebrates the best in research and publishing in architectural history. The Dissertation Prize is the top prize for graduate research into architectural history in the UK, celebrating outstanding work by postgraduate students in taught Master’s programmes. The prize also recognises innovative work which supports SAHGB’s aim to further the knowledge of architectural history.

There are two categories of the Dissertation Prize to acknowledge the differences in the educational structures of different programmes. 

• Category 1 celebrates Dissertations written as part of a taught MA/MSc programme in Architectural History, Heritage or Conservation.
• Category 2 honours dissertations submitted at MArch and MSc programmes researching questions of architectural history as a broader field.

“Things Get In”. A Study of arthropod life at the Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette.

Eliot Haworth won the Category 1 award for his work titled ‘“Things Get In”. A Study of arthropod life at the Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette’, judged by Dr Katrione Byrne (Birmingham City University), Neil Gregory (Historic Environment Scotland), and Dr Matthew Wells (Manchester School of Architecture). 

Commenting on Eliot's work, the judging panel said: 

“'Things Get In' is a wonderfully innovative exploration of arthropod life within Le Corbusier’s the Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette in Éveux, France. Using the framework of the interior as a physically porous space that reinforces separation between human and nonhuman, this research focuses on arthropodal presence within the building to disturb the notion of the bounded interior. It shows how, by looking at such a well-known project afresh, new knowledges about architecture and its histories can be unearthed. In developing and testing a methodology for studying the lives of arthropods in and around La Tourette it produces a wider ethical and political sensibility that suggests buildings, and by extension human lives, are enmeshed within a wider ecology and not separable from it. “Things Get In” explores and unearths possible pathways for situating architecture within a context that, as the author puts it, ‘is always more than human.” 

Eliot was nominated for the award by Dr Robin Wilson, Co-Director of the Architectural History programme at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

More information

• Find out more about the Architectural History MA
• Read an excerpt from Eliot Haworth’s dissertation
• Read more about the award on the SAHGB website

Lead image: South elevation of Le Corbusier’s Couvent de Sainte-Marie de la Tourette outside the village of Eveaux, France.

Slideshow images: Views from the windows of La Tourette, interrupted by various arthropod species. Photographs by Eliot Haworth.