HEAD JUDGE

Simon has been a practicing architect since 2000. He is currently Deputy Head of School and Director of the Undergraduate Programme at Sheffield University School of Architecture.

Simon has held teaching and leadership roles at several Schools of Architecture including Glasgow School of Art, Nottingham University, and the University of Strathclyde and has held External Examiner positions at the Universities of Newcastle, University of Portsmouth and the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Simon has also been a guest academic at the University of Illinois USA, and the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.

He has lived in the city centre of Sheffield for ten years and has continued involvement with Sheffield Civic Trust and Sheffield Society of Architects.

Kudzai Matsvai is a queer, Black, working-class, immigrant woman born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She is also a self-described ‘Blackademic’, currently undertaking a Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool, as well as an Educator and Spatial Thinker working across the UK and internationally.

Her praxis utilises the complex identitarian elements of her being to create meaningful spaces on the periphery of architectural education and practice. She actively marginalises the centre to advance decolonial, feminist approaches to teaching about, engaging with, and creating space. In this work, she has engaged with firms including Heatherwick Studio, DIALOG, Grimshaw Global, and Kasian. She also maintains an active presence within the academy, working with schools of architecture in the UK to interrogate and innovate static, Eurocentric modes of teaching and learning.

Beyond this, she delivered a TEDx talk in 2023 and judged the RIBA Bronze Medal and Sheffield Design Awards in 2024. In 2025, she was part of the inaugural cohort of Professor Lesley Lokko’s ‘Nomadic African Studio (NAS)’ in Fez, Morocco. She returned to NAS in 2026 as a member of the faculty in Accra, Ghana.

Writing by and about her can be found in Building Design and DISRUPT Mag respectively.

Robyn Kent is a Senior Associate Landscape Architect and Architectural Designer at Mott MacDonald, with experience delivering landscape-led regeneration, public realm and placemaking projects across the UK. She is passionate about creating sustainable, people-centred places that enhance communities and respond sensitively to their environmental and cultural context.

Working across multidisciplinary teams, Robyn has led projects from concept through to delivery, collaborating closely with clients, architects, planners and stakeholders to achieve high-quality design outcomes. She has a particular interest in landscape-led design, biodiversity enhancement and the role of landscape architecture in creating resilient, healthy places.

Her combined expertise in landscape architecture and architectural design provides a valuable perspective when assessing design quality, placemaking and the relationship between buildings and their surrounding environments.

Andy Davey is the senior partner at Simpson & Brown, Edinburgh, one of the UK’s foremost architectural practices in the cultural heritage sector.

Andy trained at the Bartlett School of Architecture and has been responsible for a number of RIBA Award winning projects, including the remodelling of York Art Gallery and new visitor centres at St Albans Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral and Rievaulx Abbey.

He is currently working on projects at Manchester Cathedral, Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, and the National Coal Mining Museum near Wakefield.