The SOM Foundation is pleased to announce the 2022 recipients of three of its five annual awards programs: the Robert L. Wesley Award, the European Research Prize, and the Research Prize.
Robert L. Wesley Award
The Robert L. Wesley Award supports BIPOC undergraduate students enrolled in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, urban design, or engineering programs in the United States. Bria Miller (Howard University, Department of Architecture), Kai Benjamin Parel-Sewell (California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, Department of Architecture), and Gabriela Robles-Muñoz (Iowa State University, Department of Architecture) will each receive a $10,000 award, in addition to a yearlong mentorship program that connects the students with leading BIPOC practitioners and educators.
This year’s jury was led by Robert L. Wesley (Retired Partner at SOM, Chicago) and included Paola Aguirre (Founder at Borderless, Chicago and San Antonio), Ojay Obinani (Associate Principal at SOM, New York), and Jia Yi Gu (Director and Curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, West Hollywood, California).
Research Prize and European Research Prize
The foundation’s Research Prize and European Research Prize—created in 2018 and 2021, respectively—aim to cultivate new ideas and meaningful research that addresses the critical issues of our time. This year’s topic, “Shaping Our World Through Air,” sees winning proposals from researchers at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain); a team at Yale University and the University of Houston; and one from Carnegie Mellon University.
UCLouvain, the European Research Prize winner, will receive €20,000 to conduct research for the project “Air de jeux: Protecting Children from Air Pollution by Designing Urban Environmental Installations,” to propose urban environmental installations to mitigate outdoor air pollutant exposure for children. The project’s principal investigators are Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Chiara Cavalieri, Beatrice Lampariello, Damien Claeys, Gérald Ledent, Christine Fontaine, and Geoffrey Van Moeseke, with collaborators from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Les Chercheurs d’air, BuildWind, and the municipality. Team member Llaguno-Munitxa noted that “the SOM Foundation European Research Prize is one of the few grants allowing the exploration of design-oriented research projects within architectural teaching coursework.”
The jury for the European Research Prize was led by SOM Foundation Executive Director Iker Gil and Kent Jackson (Partner of SOM, London and Secretary of the SOM Foundation), and included Ivan Blasi (Director of Prizes and Programmes at the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona), Mina Hasman (Sustainability Director at SOM, London), Aseem Inam (Professor and Chair in Urban Design at Cardiff University; Director of TRULAB: Laboratory for Designing Urban Transformation; 1999 CIAU Fellow), and Olga Subirós (Architect and Curator, Barcelona).
Similarly addressing the topic of “Shaping Our World Through Air,” each of the two Research Prize winners will receive a $40,000 prize to conduct original research. “Collective Comfort: Framing the Cooling Center as a Resiliency and Educational Hub for Communities in Desert Cities” — the winning proposal from Liz Gálvez (Yale University, School of Architecture) and Dalia Munenzon (University of Houston, Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture & Design) — aims to develop a public program that rethinks the cooling center as an educational resilience hub. The other winning proposal, “Taking Back the Air: Collective Learning, Advocacy, and Design for a Healthy Environment” by Nida Rehman (Carnegie Mellon University, School of Architecture), asks how spatial design pedagogy and research can engage in interpretive, collaborative, and community-centered approaches to weave together the complex histories, political ecologies, material effects, modes of resistance, and everyday experiences of toxic systems to help shape better worlds.
This year’s jury was led by SOM Foundation Executive Director Iker Gil and included Daniel A. Barber (Professor of Architecture and Environment in the Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building at the University of Technology Sydney; Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Giovanna Borasi (Director and Chief Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal), Mario Gooden (Professor of Professional Practice and Codirector of the Global Africa Lab at Columbia GSAPP, New York City; Director of Mario Gooden Studio: Architecture + Design, New York City), and Sarah Herda (Director of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago).
Header image: “Junkanoo Pavilion.” © Bria Miller.