Two emerging fjcers recognised at the 2025 NSW Institute of Architects Student Architect Awards
Cheera Montriwat, working in collaboration with Neha Kayastha, was awarded the NSW RAIA Architectural Technologies Award for a project that rethinks the humble brick.
Their work explores how fragments, specifically broken bricks often cast aside as construction waste, can be reclaimed as both structure and ornament. What emerged was a speculative yet practical investigation: a facade system that is at once sustainable, expressive, and deeply rooted in the logic of reuse.
It is a project that speaks to an urgent material culture, one where design ingenuity is measured not just by novelty but by how it engages the afterlives of materials.
Cheera was guided by Shahar Cohen, former fjcstudio designer and Co-Founder of Second Edition, who served as the design tutor in Cheera’s master studio at UTS. The project’s layered, material sensibility reflects this lineage, rooted in design thinking that embraces fabrication, sustainability, and the expressive potential of the reused.
In the realm of architectural ideas, James Bell received the UTS History & Theory Prize, honouring his critical inquiry into the layered and contested identity of Sydney’s Kings Cross. His essay, written for the subject Current Events & Debates with Nathan Etherington and Alex Jablonowska, charts the evolving narrative of the precinct through the lens of gentrification. With clarity and depth, he unpacks how urban change is not merely a visual transformation but a cultural displacement, where memory, identity and public life are rewritten, often at odds with one another.
“I am grateful to have been awarded the History & Theory Prize,” James reflects, “and to contribute to a conversation about the role of architecture in shaping and reflecting urban identity.”
Together, these two projects form a compelling picture of what architectural education can be: both technically rigorous and socially attuned. At fjcstudio, this kind of thinking is not peripheral. It is central. It lives in the studio’s ongoing mentorship culture, its interdisciplinarity, and its belief that architecture is as much about questioning as it is about building.
Cheera’s material experimentation and James’ urban critique remind us that emerging designers are not just learning. They are leading. They are challenging conventions, reframing practice, and pushing architecture into more sustainable, more critical, and more resonant territories.
Congratulations to Cheera and James, not only for these accolades but for the depth and vision they bring to our collective practice. We’re very proud of our graduates and students, whose work continues to enrich fjcstudio’s evolving narrative — one grounded in context, driven by curiosity, and committed to meaningful design.
