Architecture students scoop Santander award for enterprise

CAUKIN Studio, a team of first year Masters students from the Welsh School of Architecture have won the ‘People’s Choice Award’ at this years ‘Santander Universities Enterprise Awards’.

CAUKIN Studio is a design and build social enterprise which was set up by the team whilst studying at Cardiff University’s Welsh School of Architecture. The group decided they wanted to test out and apply the skills learned whilst studying, to real world projects. Their first project, PLAYSCAPE, a creative play and learning space, was designed and built for a charity on the island of Koh Rong, off the coast of Cambodia. The next two projects PLAYDIUM and PLAYVILION, both located in Indonesia, took a team of over 30 Welsh School of Architecture and Sheffield School of Architecture volunteers to build the two playgrounds. This summer they will be completing their two most substantial projects to date; a Nursing Station/Kindergarten and a Community Hall on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji.

The team shared with us the motivation behind the projects and their experience at this year’s SPARK awards: “For the last 3 years we have been designing and building community based projects in locations around the world for communities in need. We believe that there is so much to be learnt from the process of physical construction, so we wish to offer this to as many design based students and young professionals as possible! 

“As part of the natural development of our enterprise, we decided to enter Cardiff University’s SPARK Enterprise competition, which we were fortunate enough to win; giving us automatic entry into the Nationwide Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards. After submitting business plans, pitch videos and pitching in front of a live audience we were lucky enough to receive the ‘People’s Choice Award’ which put us in the top 18 businesses out of 2000 applicants. We will be pitching at the final in October to the CEO of Santander for a chance to win some additional funding!”

 For more information about CAUKIN and their previous projects, please see visit  www.caukinstudio.com 

Find out more about Santander Universities and the SPARK awards.