Architectural Association students propose radical retrofit of London's failed housing

The Architectural Association (AA) has awarded five students a Diploma with Honours for the 2025–2026 academic year: Jay E Chew, Changjin Kweon, Ruby Amelia Neal, Sacha Trouiller, and Jing Yun Zhou. Their projects will be exhibited in the AA Bar at 36 Bedford Square, London, from 20 June to 11 July 2026 as part of Projects Review 2026. Jing Yun Zhou's 'Hot Assets' proposes a radical retrofit of London's failed new-build housing blocks, cutting and extending brick-clad facades to improve thermal performance and create social spaces. Changjin Kweon's 'Pulse Logic' designs a data-driven public asset for Nine Elms Station that translates urban data into visible spatial states. Jay Chew's 'Marking the Land' examines territorial practice in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, Malaysia, proposing architectural markers outside state legal frameworks. Ruby Neal's 'The Smoke of the Earth' creates a non-hierarchical theatre in Stoke-on-Trent using rammed earth walls made from on-site industrial waste. Sacha Trouiller's 'Peripheral Sea' addresses housing shortage and landscape destruction in France's Etang de Berre territory through two interventions at the edge of urban sprawl and water. The projects span Diploma Units 10, 20, 17, 7, and 14.