About

The CEPT Essay Prize was instituted in 2018 as an effort to initiate a dialogue with future collaborators, writers, researchers and stakeholders on architecture, settlements and habitation centred around the built environment in South and South East Asia.

The CEPT Essay Prize embodies the spirit of our belief in collaborations and connections, that we think can only be made possible through the participation of young and fresh graduates. We believe that it is of utmost significance that young graduates need to be  encouraged  to think and write about issues pertaining to the built environment in South Asia and South-East Asia. At a time of rapid development, it provides a meaningful pause, an occasion to ponder and deliberate, to put pen to paper,  which further enables them to build up their confidence in their own writing skills.

The CEPT Essay Prize aims to invite submissions from recent graduates of Architecture and allied disciplines from across the world. The intention is to build up on each cycle of the Essay Prize, and  to help create a body of written essays that are marked by sound thinking, yet is simple and lucid, and display empathy and a deep understanding of social issues.

With the initiation of the CEPT Essay Prize, CEPT University intends to establish further its intent, as a leading institution that encourages writing skills at every stage of its education, right from the undergraduate foundation stage, up to the final year of architectural, environmental planning, and design education. Because we believe, like philosophers, educators, thinkers, writers, artists and every ‘self-aware’ being, that writing ‘insists’, and CEPT Essay Prize aims to provide meaningful platforms every year, through its essay themes, towards this belief.