Our Architectural Design competition is an exciting opportunity for Year 12 (or equivalent) students to analytically approach a design problem and creatively develop architectural design solutions. Students will design and communicate their design solutions through drawings and a design narrative.

You are challenged to design a new building somewhere on the Fitzwilliam College site. This building will serve as a hub for interaction between teaching staff and students, where they can share and explore ideas.

You are required to submit: 

• Project Title that best describes your design intention and final design solution 
• Design Narrative of 500 words that concisely explains your design inspiration, design objective, and final design strategy developed to meet your design objective 

• Drawings that show the following: 

  1) floor plan(s) of your building at 1:200 scale 

  2) one elevation and one section of the building that best describes main features of the design solution 

  3) one site plan that indicates the location of the building in relation to existing buildings in the college site. A detailed site plan showing the   ground floor plans of the individual buildings is available on the essay competition website for reference, but you should produce a new drawing for the competition submission. 

  4) one perspective drawing of your building that highlights your design intention and shows the placement of a new building in relation to existing college buildings nearby

Submission Guidance 

If you would like to submit an entry to the Architectural Design Competition please complete the online form 

https://cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9p0YflX7NW76N82

Submissions can be uploaded to the online form in a PDF format. If the file size is too big to upload to the form, please email your submission to essaycompetitions@fitz.cam.ac.uk. We can also accept entries by post. Please address postal submissions to: Schools Liaison Officer, Fitzwilliam College, Storey's Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DG.

Architectural Tours of the College 

On Saturday 15th February, Mr Eric Martin, Director of Studies in Architecture, will give an architectural tour of the College to competition entrants and other attendees interested in architecture. If you would like to take part in this opportunity, please email essaycompetitions@fitz.cam.ac.uk by the 1st of February to register your interest and receive further details. If you would like to visit but cannot attend on the Saturday 15th February, please email and we can arrange a self-guided tour.

Competition Rules

This essay competition is for students in their penultimate year of education - Year 12 (Eng + Wales), S5 (Scotland), Y13 (NI) or equivalent overseas. International applicants are welcomed but the submission must be written in English. Applicants will be required to enter their details online and to either upload a PDF copy of their design electronically or post a hard copy to:

Schools Liaison Officer Fitzwilliam College 

Cambridge 

CB3 0DG 

by 6pm on Friday 28th February 2025. 

If the PDF file is too large to submit to the online form, please email your submission to essaycompetitions@fitz.cam.ac.uk. 

Further submission information can be found on the competition website: https://www.fitz.cam.ac.uk/event/fitzwilliam-college-competitions 

Your submission must be entirely your own work. When submitting your design you will need to provide contact information for one of your teachers and if necessary we may contact them to verify that your submission is entirely your own work. Students are only permitted to enter one competition and may only submit one entry to their chosen competition. There is a strict limit of five submissions per school for each competition. If more than five students from the same school enter the same competition, a teacher from that school will be contacted and asked to select the five entries; failure to do so will result in all submissions from the school to that competition being disqualified

Design Narratives should be no longer than 500 words