Drawing attention to drawing: Archisource
Archisource was founded in 2017 with the aim of creating a tool for inspiration and a platform for sharing ideas by architects, landscape architects, designers and creatives around the world.
Eight years on they have launched an annual London Exhibition, organised collaborative projects, launched various publications and built a growing community.
In 2019 Archisource launched the ‘Drawing of the Year Awards’. The 2025 winners were exhibited at London’s Truman Brewery in July. (See London Creates).
Six Award Winners
Notably the Digital Media Award went to Ying Yu Wong an alumni the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, who graduated with a Landscape Architecture MLA in 2023.
Her winning entry, ‘Rainforest Commons’ (pictured above), was originally exhibited at The Bartlett Autumn Show 2022. (A full project index from that show, leading with Landscape Architecture MA/ MLA work, is available to view here).
The project description for ‘Rainforest Commons’ reads:
Through strategic regional planning and multiscale landscape designs, a system of landscape infrastructure and new afforestation technique is developed to cultivate ‘rainforest commons’, transforming commons from bracken-invaded moorland to temperate rainforest with phased management. The designed landscape infrastructure and landscape management system support local communities to actively involve and participate in the extensive process of restoring temperate rainforests. Multipurpose landscape interventions are designed to support the development of temperate rainforest over a long period of time and cultivate a self-sustained rainforest eventually. The design itself will be a perpetual process which expand and evolve with time.
The five other winners of the Archisource ‘Drawing of the Year’ Awards for 2025 were:
Beyond Visualisation Award 2025:
Dystopia of the Omnicidal Landscape by Thomas Biscaro - Université Laval, Canada
Description: Near the China–Mongolia border, the city of Baotou silently reshapes our reality by extracting nearly half of the world’s rare earth metals—key to the devices that embody our belief in inevitable progress. Ten kilometers away, a toxic lake swells with radioactive waste. Nothing lives there. This project explores speculative architecture as a catalyst for awareness, staging a doomed decontamination plant at its center. The worker returns daily, repeating futile gestures as the lake rises. Architecture becomes a witness—an anti-memorial—making visible what we strive to forget: our denial, our inertia, our collapse.
Digital Drafting Award 2025:
Concrete Plant Revitalization Isometric by Shing Hei Hui - Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Description: Exploring the potential of deconstructing and reassembling on-site materials to accommodate farming purposes .By employing an original approach to sourcing natural resources, the aim is to convert the environmentally detrimental concrete plant at Hong Kong urban area into an ecologically sustainable bamboo farm and urban agriculture production facility.
Hand Drawn Award 2025:
Kowloon Walled City by Jimmy Wong - United Kingdom
Description: Inspired by Greg Girard’s 1987 photograph “Kowloon Walled City—Tung Tau Tsuen Road facade,” this pen and ink piece captures the dense and chaotic energy of the infamous Hong Kong settlement, before its demolition in 1993. The view, taken from the northern edge of the complex, highlights the ad hoc layering of apartments and businesses, marked by uneven floor levels, dense signage, and a maze of overhangs and balconies. While the Walled City was often portrayed as a lawless slum, this perspective reveals its vibrant inner life: a self-built, self-organised community full of energy and resilience. Through intricate linework, the piece captures both the architectural chaos and the human presence behind it.
Mixed Media Award 2025:
The Tales of Liminality by Anna Pang - Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Description: Tales of Liminality, a 12-panel screen set, reimagines Venice by intertwining the city’s rich silk-weaving heritage with a broader, transnational history. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese rakuchū rakugai-zu paintings, the work challenges conventional perspectives of urban space, critiquing the Eurocentric frameworks that have shaped the development and remembering of cities. By tracing the dialogues between East and West along the Silk Roads, the piece highlights the fluidity of cultural boundaries and intertwining of multiple histories, offering a new lens through which to view Venice as a city of liminality.
Visualisation Award 2025:
Mierceholts New National Timber Reserve - Close up by Jack Oaten - Kingston University, UK
Description: This project explores the potential of an industrial forest stretching from the Forest of Dean to the Forest of Bowland. Currently, the UK produces 11 million tonnes of timber per year. Only 2.8 million of that is used in construction. The project proposes a new national forest bordering Wales will produce a yield of 12.7 million tonnes annually. Through sustainable forestry practices, if materials can be used more efficiently, this number could double. The sawmill will become a piece of rural infrastructure, processing timber grown in this new forest using digital methods to extract more than a traditional sawmill could. The sawmills will be able to produce enough timber for construction each year to replace a 1/4 of all uk materials.
Five Medals
In addition further recognition was given with the awarding of five Medals:
Narrative Medal 2025: The Repository for Metropolitan History by Adrian Yu - University of Toronto, Canada
Creativity Medal 2025: Now and 100 Years by Jack Oaten - Kingston University, UK
Environmental Medal 2025: Interior Perspective of Annamaria Gas Platform by Bruno Žganjer Šram - University of Zagreb, Croatia
Humanity Medal 2025: Bridging Home by Michael Lewis, Luke Macnab & Andy Wardrope - United Kingdom
Hand Skill Medal: Urban Heights: Stippling Amsterdam’s High-Rise Facades by Bhagyashri Khandare - India
Seven creative practitioners and industry experts formed this year’s 'Drawing of the Year' judging panel:
Narinder Sagoo MBE, Senior Partner, Foster + Partners
Jim Heverin, Director, Zaha Hadid Architects
Sam Hudson, Art Director, Hayes Davidson
Will Jefferies, Associate, RSHP
Eliza Grosvenor, Head of Programme, London Festival of Architecture
Emily Glynn and Mansel Haynes, Co-Founders, Archisource & London Creates
LOCAL INSIGHTS
In March 2025 Boffa Miskell captured whakaaro from three landscape architects - Nicole Tune, Morné Hugo and Katie Chilton - on the enduring appeal of hand-drawing, and the important role it plays in their design process.