The GIA Outstanding Achievement Award recognises the most talented students across both Glasgow Schools of Architecture

Place In Fiction: Follies of Fiction for the Hidden in Tokyo

The project draws from a study of Haruki Murakami's 1985 novel 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' and its fictionalised critique of modern Japan’s business (counter-)culture. On this basis, the thesis focuses on the phenomenon of socially-alienated individuals known as the Hikikomori. Drawing from Murakami's literature through mapping and drawing exercises, the project draws out the gaps of places and society of Tokyo and charges the understanding of the complex phenomenon.

In response to the critique of the post-modernist society, the thesis proposes a series of architectural follies in the Shibuya district of (fictionalised) Tokyo. In the background are questions about expectations of utility and usefulness—asked of both the thinking subjects (the Hikikomori) and of architecture itself