The success of architecture students in Philadelphia

Two-person team of students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian University of Technology (Dorota Cichoń and Oliwia Jagła) won the first prize in the student edition of the prestigious Edmund N. Bacon Design Awards 2026 competition.

- This is a special distinction for us because we managed to repeat last year’s success, winning the highest podium for the second time in a row. This time, however, we worked in a smaller, two-person team and completely independently, without the supervision – the winners report.

This year’s edition of the competition has a jubilee dimension, as it falls on the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the competition in memory of the outstanding urban planner Edmund N. Bacon. The students will attend the Philadelphia awards ceremony in person. The trip to the gala will be partially sponsored thanks to the financial support of the Silesian University of Technology and the Faculty of Architecture.

Students of the last year of architecture face a great opportunity to promote their own work and projects. Their work, titled “Neighbourhood Fabric,” focuses on the revitalization of the former Philadelphia campus of about 100 000 m². The authors focused on treating the district as a living, multi-layered system of relations, where instead of demolition they proposed superstructures and adaptations respecting the historical DNA of the place.

The aim of the project was to create an inclusive space connecting generations, which integrates history with modernity and activates previously dead fragments of urban tissue through new social, recreational, and modern mobility functions.

Congratulations to the winners!