This month’s AJ Specification focuses on roofing and flooring. There are three case studies, all with an educational dimension.
Urban Fabric Architects’ Emmanuel Centre is a new facility for 24 students with autism at St Paul’s Catholic School in Milton Keynes, organised around a flexible, double-height space with a glulam timber frame, coloured lino flooring and a deeply pitched clay-tiled roof.
NOOMA Studio has transformed the previously unused rooftop of the Grade II-listed Halcyon London International School in Marylebone into a biodiverse wellbeing garden for outdoor learning.
And jmarchitects’ Glencadam Distillery Visitor Centre in Brechin, Angus, creates new exhibition and tasting spaces within the historic working distillery, with a pitched roof incorporating two copper-clad rooflights reinterpreted from historic Doig ventilators.
In The Regs, Geoff Wilkinson warns that architects are specifying rooftop solar PV systems without adequately considering fire risk, and sets out the key design considerations around cavities and fire stops. This month’s In Practice feature sees NVB Architects director James McGillivray talking to Fran Williams about the technical challenges of designing calm environments for SEND schools.
The issue also includes the AJ Buildings Library entry on Mangera Yvars Architects’ Villa Valldoreix in Barcelona, and Drawing to a Close presents Alexander Brodsky’s concept sketch for his first permanent work in the UK, a bookshop at Pushkin House in London. On the Radar rounds up new products including Sugarcrete, a biomaterial made from sugar cane by-products developed by the University of East London and AKT II.
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AJ 24.09.26: Student Prize
This is the AJ Student Prize 2026 issue. Showcasing the work of architecture students from across the UK, the prize drew 110 submissions from 61 out of 62 eligible UK schools. The students featured are not simply preparing to enter the profession as it currently exists; they are already questioning its boundaries, its responsibilities and its possibilities. Projects grapple with questions that extend well beyond the conventional production of buildings, from circularity and material reuse to funding, phasing and delivery.
The issue’s lead news feature presents the findings of the AJ’s Into Work survey, published here for the first time, with feedback from more than 400 students and early-career professionals. Key findings are that more than a quarter of student respondents have given up on their dreams of becoming an architect, and 57 per cent of those cite insufficient pay. The results paint a stark picture of intense competition, mounting debt and professional disillusionment.
A feature by Derin Fadina and Fran Williams asks why architecture is still worth studying, speaking to former architecture students now working as filmmakers, planners, set designers, cultural programmers and journalists, including the Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright. In addition, architect and lecturer Toko Andrews writes a letter to students just starting their academic year.
Away from architectural education, another news feature focuses on plans approved for a quartet of all-timber tree houses in Norfolk by Material Cultures, Hudson Architects, Denizen Works and Mole Architects, each to be built largely from trees grown on site. And in Opinion, Alexander Buck argues that a retrofit-first planning policy would unlock innovation.
In Culture, Edward Bottoms talks about the launch of a major digital archive related to the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture, and Mark David Flynn reports on the restoration of Copenhagen’s fire-gutted Børsen, Denmark’s first listed building.
Rounding out the issue are David Grandorge’s photograph of a 1:10 model of Kenzo Tange’s 1953 house in Tokyo, sketches by Azal Kassim and a competitions compilation.
Did you know that students get 50 per cent off subscriptions? Find out more here!
