Initiator of SAA Awards
SAA Awards is an event held periodically in Architecture Department - UNPAR, Bandung - Indonesia since 2003. The main objective of the event is awarding the best designers among SAA (Final Architecture Studio) participants. Besides, it also useful as the tool for evaluating the quality of architecture students works regularly, especially the final studio. It has been held with the support by profession association, i.e. IAI (Indonesian Institute of Architects). This is an example of integration between academic and professional fields to answer the demand in the particular field.
Architecture education through designing tasks in Architecture Design Studio basically is an assimilation of theoretical and practical aspects ; hence the academic values cannot be separated from the applications, especially the ones which are gained from experiences in practical fields. The integration between academic and professional world can be done by carrying out events in collaborations with particular profession associations. One of the events is by evaluating and awarding the best students projects by the associations. Such events are commonly done in some universities in foreign countries. The projects are acknowledged by the practitioners. Through feedback from the professional fields to the academic world, it is hoped that they can become significant inputs for the development of architectural designing education in campus and vice versa, so both sides can support each other and open wider horizons for themselves.
The event started with an exhibition for all projects of Final Studio (Studio Akhir Arsitektur) which got A marks and made public. It is continued with marking time by the juries and ended with the awarding ceremony for the winners. The juries who marked for the SAA Awards were invited from foreign architect association which is recommended by IAI and not related to SAA mentors ; hence the results are objective and independent. The invited juries are those who are well - experienced as juries, academicians, practitioners, and also experienced in competitions join nationally and internationally.
The projects which received the awards have been published in the books of Architecture Final Project - SAA Awards volume 1 - 5 and have been spread throughout Indonesia (for public and universities) and sent to outside Indonesia such as UIA, Chulalongkorn University - Thailand, MIT - USA, University of Malaya, UTM, UM, IIUM - Malaysia, NUS - Singapore, University of Shenzhen - China, University of Melbourne, UNSW - Australian Tsinghua University, Tongji University, Beijing University of Technology - China Architecture Society of China and through ARCASIA forum of architecture education session 2005 - 2017, been given to the Architect Association (Bangladesh, India, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan, The Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Myandmar, Maldives, Australia, Brunei, etc.). Some of the projects of SAA Awards have been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally (awarded as a Favorite on World International Competition - The Best World Final Project, Archiprix 2017, Ahmedabad, etc.).
