RCA x EPA 1:1
25 June 2026 – Tom Sweet
It was a real pleasure to once again host the Royal College or Art MA Architecture students, tutors, and invited industry guests at Eric Parry Architects London studio on the balmy evening of Thursday 25th June. This is the third year we have collaborated with the RCA to showcase the amazing 1:1 explorations that the first-year Masters students have developed, built and tested as part of their technical studies works. The Event provided an opportunity to bring together academia and industry in both a celebration of the students work itself, and a discussion around the diverse range of environmental, social, and political issues (and possible solutions) that were raised by what was presented.
Full scale material, component, and system prototyping and testing is vital in architecture and engineering to ensure continued innovation and improvement in how we build and what we build with. It enables us to start to tackle some of the bigger questions we all face working in the context of a climate and biodiversity crisis with real confidence, and with growing knowledge and expertise away from the risk adverse and reactive day to day travails of the built environment industry at present. Funding is growing to support such innovation in industry, but what this event showed once again is that our future is in safe hands as the level of rigour, skill, and ingenuity with which each idea had been conceived and developed was truly phenomenal. I have no doubt that some of the ideas shared here will go on to be developed and interrogated further and hopefully contribute to future innovation at industry scale. Thanks to all who took time to share their work and contribute to the debate and to a very successful evening all round.
This year we were grateful also for the participation of the Adrian Lahoud and Eric Parry on the night. Together they provided an eloquent introduction to the event and many contributions throughout the evening’s discussions, with both reflecting on a personal level about the potency of the detail and the essentiality of 1:1 experimentation.
My personal thanks go to Manja van de Worp, my co-organiser and chair for this event and a truly dynamic leader at the RCA School of Architecture in technical studies (TS) who is in no small way responsible (alongside the amazing team of TS tutors) for enthusing the students year on year and providing them with the support, knowledge and agency to explore ideas and innovate in the way they do. This work deserves the platform we have together sought to provide it for the last 3 years, and warrants its exposure to the professional world, to allow all to support and nurture this creativity as it emerges from its academic roots and impacts and inspires us all.
