Pen, pencil, computer or even AI –whatever your medium, our drawing competition is open for submissions
Is your gift for visual expression as sharp as your imagination? Eye Line 2025, RIBAJ’s annual, international competition showcasing the best drawing and rendering skills, is now open for entries. As always, we are asking for images in student and practitioner categories – that brilliantly convey architecture, in any medium or combination of media.
We are seeking the finest work here and internationally, from those at the sharp end of representation. Images of all kinds, from hand-drawn concept sketches to technically proficient and layered renders are eligible: ‘drawing’ includes any method by which the power of an architectural idea is communicated, be they of existing buildings or works of the imagination- and AI entries are considered if they are declared as such.
Practitioners and students enter different categories:
- Student category: images made by those in architectural education or who are submitting work executed before final qualification.
- Practitioner category: images made by those fully qualified and working in practice or academia, whether for real projects or exploring ideas or experiences.
Winning entries will be published in the July/August RIBAJ and on ribaj.com and we hope to have a winners’ party and show at the RIBA. Our colleagues at RIBA’s Drawings and Archives Collection inspect winners for potential inclusion in their famous archive.
Last year’s student winner was the National University of Singapore’s Kun Yi James Lim, whose fractured plan and elevational images, on occasion shot through by long rays of sunlight, aimed to give expression to fleeting moments or past remembrances, like some Proustian projection of human experience. Practitioner winner was Spain’s University of Zaragoza, professor Luis-Miguel Lus-Arana’s, ‘Welcome to Tribuneville’. His epic, 3m-wide sepis quality drawing, depicting sixty entries from the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition, is an obsessive menagerie of building types and styles, creating a new, fantasy quarter for the Windy City.
Every year we are gratified by the originality, wit and talent in evidence with Eye Line: our international, free-to-enter drawing and visualisation award. Practitioners and students – show us your best work and join a prestigious cohort of past winners.
Judges:
Mary Duggan
Director, Mary Duggan Architects
Samantha Hardingham
Independent writer, designer and educator
Luis Miguel Lus Arana
Winner Eye Line 2024. Associate professor, University of Zaragoza School of Engineering and Architecture
Bongani Muchemwa
Director, McCloy + Muchemwa Architects
Jan-Carlos Kucharek (chair)
Deputy editor, RIBAJ
Eye Line rules:
We seek the best 2D representations of a building design or concept through visual means. They may be hand or digitally drawn, incorporating collage or any combination or overlay of methods. Video and straight photography are excluded. AI entries to the Eye Line competition should be stated as such.
- Enter in either the student or practitioner category. RIBAJ reserves the right to reallocate entries to a different category if deemed necessary.
- Maximum of three images per entry, which can be from different projects or all from the same project.
- Joint entries on which more than one person has worked are permissible, with authors stated.
- All entries must be uploaded via the link below. We cannot accept physical works. Images must be at 300dpi, file size maximum 25Mb.
- Work must have been produced within the three years up to the competition closing date and must not previously have been entered for Eye Line.
Key dates:
Deadline: Friday 9 May 2025, 14:00 BST
Judging: End May 2025
Winners and commendations published: RIBAJ July/August 2025 and online.
Exhibition opens (provisional): August/September 2025
Correspondence: eyeline.ribaj@riba.org