Robert Adam Architects are delighted to announce the winners of the Travel Scholarship 2007. The scholarship is awarded annually to give students the opportunity to explore international architecture and urban design. This year there was an extremely high standard of applications and a joint scholarship was awarded to Paige Johnson and Emily Penn, each receiving the sum of £1500.

Paige's proposal 'Gatsby's Garden: In Search of the Art Deco Landscape' will explore a greatly neglected area of twentieth-century garden history. Whilst Art Deco buildings are well documented, and there has been much written about the aesthetic of the movement, its expression in the landscape has received little attention. It has also been greatly misunderstood, often allied with Modernism, whereas in reality, it was a decorative movement that interpreted traditional forms in new ways, contemporary to, but in disagreement with, the militantly functionalist constructions of Modernist architects. Paige intends to investigate the history of the Deco garden using archival sources and visiting the surviving remnants of 1920s gardens in the USA, England and Europe. Her proposal will weave these historical findings into the famous story of the Jazz age, 'The Great Gatsby', aiming to recreate the appearance of the garden in which Jay Gatsby held his lavish Long Island soirées. Paige is from the United States and is a current member of the Garden History MA at the University of Bristol.

Emily Penn will use her award to explore the issue of sustainability in China, assessing the influence of traditional architecture on new development. China has the fastest growing economy in the world, and the latest architectural technologies are being tested in the run up the 2008 Olympics. However, whilst new development is occurring, a large proportion of the country remains untouched, displaying architecture particular to the culture and climate of each region. Visiting modern developments and traditional Chinese sites, Emily will explore how new architecture is incorporating the latest technology and traditional culture. Documenting her findings in journals, sketchbooks and via digital media, she will be gathering research and undertaking environmental analysis whilst working in a local practice. With sustainability issues in mind, Emily also plans to reduce her carbon footprint by traveling to Beijing on the trans Siberian express, allowing her to witness the vernacular architecture of many different cultures and learn how buildings were constructed in the past when energy and money were scarcer. Emily Penn is an RIBA Part I architecture student at the University of Cambridge.