The Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture is proud to announce the student and faculty winners of the Fall 2022 SoA Awards. Our awards recognize undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty with funding support. Awards support projects, internships, travel, and research, and recognize student work in sustainable design. Learn more about this fall’s winners below.
Thank you to our donors for their generous support. Please join us in congratulating the winners on their tremendous accomplishments, and thanks to all of those who participated!
2022 SoA Awards Committee: Meredith Marsh (Chair), Joshua Bard, Christi Danner, Omar Khan, Steve Lee
Note: The application period for the SoA awards is now being split between the fall and spring semesters. The call for applications for spring awards will be announced in December 2022, with applications due in March 2023. More information about the awards is available on the SoA Awards page.
PROJECT & INTERNSHIP SUPPORT
Burdett Assistantship
B.Arch & M.Arch Student Award
Open to all School of Architecture students pursuing their first professional degree in architecture, this award is intended to support projects and activities that will enhance the winning student’s future work.
Fall 2022 Jury: Hal Hayes (Chair), Omar Khan, Eddy Man Kim, Valentina Vavasis
Winners: Vanshika Bhaiya, B.Arch ‘25 & Neha Chopra, B.Arch ‘25
Proposal: Identifying Flood Resistant Construction Techniques and Material Application in Southeast Asian Vernacular Architecture
Award: $4,000
Jury Comment: The project focuses on indigenous methods in southeast Asia for producing flood resistant architecture. The jury found the subject timely with the recent catastrophic floods experienced in Pakistan and India. We also found the research well focused, combining literature review, travel, and prototyping as vehicles to better understand and improve on local techniques. The project will also provide important knowledge and become the basis for thesis work to follow.
Winner: Gabrielle Benson, B.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Knotted: Textile Transformations from Surface to Mass
Award: $2,500
Jury Comment: This proposal explores the use of non-traditional media and forms for architectural use as building materials for semi-permanent occupancies. The jury found that to be of particular interest given the focus on innovative use of digital media to explore the potential of handcrafted materials to integrate with building elements and occupancies at scale. Explorations in both analog hand-made form and digital 3D scanning and printing are of particular promise and interest.
Winner: Yonghao Zhang, B.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Speculation as Critique - Pittsburgh Mines
Award: $1,500
Jury Comment: This proposal seeks to explore the medium of the graphic literature format as used in comics as a vehicle for architectural critique and for disseminating architectural information to the public in an accessible form. The jury found that this medium combined with the focus area of sustainable development and redevelopment in areas of Pittsburgh susceptible to mine subsidence to be of benefit to the student's learning and professional growth, as well as beneficial to the local community.
Winner: Priyanka Thakur, M.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Learning from the Architecture of the Forest Towards Symbiosis
Award: $2,500
Jury Comment: This thoughtful proposal reflects the student's passion for respecting and learning from indigenous building methods and materials. The jury found this project having the potential to not only educate the student, but the architecture community at large, on traditional Amazonian building methods that work with local biomes in a non-destructive, symbiotic way. The jury also appreciates that the proposal understands the need to contextualize the study subjects in the local culture, ecology, history, and engineering knowledge.
Winner: Ajay Chovatia, M.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Affordable Housing: A Visual Handbook of Incremental Housing
Award: $1,500
Jury Comment: The project seeks to explore new prototypes of affordable housing that embrace a flexibility lacking in current practice and development in India. The jury found that the proposal effectively builds on design research work that the student has previously engaged in, and to be worthy of more in depth study that the award can support. The jury also found that the possibility of creating a handbook, particularly in consultation with India's Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, promises meaningful engagement with the actual officials who guide this work.
Alwin Cassens, Jr. Memorial Fund in Architecture
Student Award
This award provides financial support to School of Architecture students to attend conferences or other events in support of their academic pursuits in the area of public interest design.
Fall 2022 Jury: Mary-Lou Arscott (Chair), Josh Bard, Kai Gutschow, Erica Cochran Hameen
Winner: Susie Kim, B.Arch ‘23
Proposal: Attending 2022 Biennale of FRAC: “Infinite Freedom, A World for a Feminist Democracy”
Award: $2,200
Jury Comment: The ambition to visit a feminist art and architecture biennale is related to a set of serious societal concerns. Their professional trajectory is described as moving towards urbanism and public interest design. The value of seeing the wide range of work from a group of 40 women architects and artists, including Tatiana Bilbao, Saba Inab, and Alice Diop within the context of the City of Orléans will be a really valuable learning experience.
Winner: Morgan Newman, PhD in Architecture ‘26
Proposal: Presenting paper “Shaded Sites of Conflict: Wooded Areas as sites of both freedom and violence for African-Americans” at the CROSSROADS Conference February 17-18, 2023 at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture
Award: $2,200
Jury Comment: This is a solid proposal to support travel to a conference with an accepted paper. The subject of the conference, “Histories of the Built Environment in the Americas and the Global South,” has a strong public interest design connection. The work is subtle, sensitive, and deals with contradictions of violence and shelter. The creative scholarship is reminiscent of the work of Saadya Hartman and of the artist Carrie Mae Weems. This promises to be a fascinating piece.
Measuring & Monitoring Services, Inc. Internship Fund
Undergraduate Student Award
This award provides financial support to undergraduate students for a summer internship or related program under the guidance of established professionals during the summer preceding their final year of undergraduate study.
Fall 2022 Jury: Erica Cochran Hameen (Chair), Bill Bates, Stuart Coppedge, Omar Khan
Winner: Anthony Wu, B.Arch ‘24
Internship: Product Design Intern in the Design Development Program at J.P Morgan Chase, New York City
Award: $3,200
Jury Comment: Anthony Wu will be working with UX Researchers and Lead Designers with the Design Development Program at J.P Morgan Chase in NYC this summer. Jurors selected Anthony because of his desire to gain a deeper understanding of “user needs and behaviors, and usability testing” to identify the workability of various solutions for different users. Anthony hopes to incorporate Accessibility and Inclusive Design practices as part of the research endeavor.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AWARD
Ralph H. Burt Jr. and Alva L. Hill Scholarship
B.Arch Student Award
This award is part of the Fourth-Year Design Awards for B.Arch students. The 2022-23 theme is Materiality. This award provides financial support to a student whose work focuses on sustainable environments, performance-based design, and systems integration throughout the design process.
Fall 2022 Jury: Eddy Man Kim (Chair), Zaid Kashef Alghata, Nina Baird, Jeremy Ficca
Winner: Rebecca Cunningham, B.Arch ‘24
Title: Haptic Materials: Upham’s Corner Library
Award: $2,200
Jury Comment: Rebecca's project on Upham's Corner Library rigorously interrogated questions of sustainability, equity, and tactility by approaching architecture through the lens of materiality. The jury was impressed by the quality of the drawings and the level of execution of the project accomplished. Rebecca's work demonstrated a general commitment to academic excellence and sustainable design practices.
Ralph H. Burt Jr. and Alva L. Hill Scholarship
M.Arch Student Award
This award provides financial support to M.Arch students pursuing their first professional degree in architecture whose work focuses on sustainable environments, performance-based design, and systems integration throughout the design process. The 2022-23 theme is Materiality.
Fall 2022 Jury: Sarosh Anklesaria (Chair), Priyanka Bista, Matthew Huber, Jonathan Kline
Winner: Priyanka Thakur, M.Arch ‘24
Title: Poetics of Bamboo: Exhibition Pavilion
Award: $2,200
Jury Comment: The jury elected to award the first prize to Priyanka Thakur for the Poetics of Bamboo Exhibition Pavilion. The project entangles the poetics and politics of material thinking through a fully realized bamboo pavilion that demonstrates ideas for low carbon, biobased construction in a developing world context. The project combines various types of bamboo sections to offer a sophisticated, performative use of the material, while addressing questions of sustainability specific to climate, labor, material waste, assembly, and disassembly.
TRAVEL AWARDS
Gindroz Prize for Summer Travel and Study in Europe
Student Award
This award was established to enrich lives and enhance education through travel and the study of traditional architecture, urbanism, and music in Europe.
Fall 2022 Jury: Omar Khan (Head, School of Architecture), Jonathan Bailey Holland (Head, School of Music)
Winner: Graham Murtha, B.Arch '25
Proposal: Studies of stone architecture in Ireland, Scotland and England
Award: $6,000
Jury Comment: This is a meticulously programmed travel that traverses through Ireland, Scotland, and England looking at stone buildings. The focus on the material allows Graham to transcend time and allows for a variety of building types, ancient and contemporary, to be studied. Also, his exquisite sketching and watercolors skills will bring new expression to representing these buildings.
Luther S. Lashmit and Louis F. Valentour Traveling Scholarships
B.Arch Student Awards
These awards are part of the Fourth-Year Design Awards for B.Arch students. They support international travel and research under the guidance of a faculty advisor.
Fall 2022 Jury: Jeremy Ficca (Chair), Heather Bizon, Gerard Damiani, Tommy Yang
Jury Comments: The jury was particularly impressed with how the selected entries outlined clear objectives for travel and how that experience will impact their academic development to follow. From a proposal to study how vernacular histories and constructions cascades into typological change, to industry and its edge on contemporary cities, the proposals showcased an interest in propelling knowledge in urban and architectural morphologies.
Honorable Mention: Shray Tripathi, B.Arch ’24
Title: Rhythmic Figures: NOMAS Pavilion & Dorchester Public Library
Award: $1,500
Jury Comment: Shray Tripathy proposed a study of Berlin’s temporal dimension and traces of deconstruction, reconstruction, and transformation. The proposal aims to unpack important questions about the heritage, identity, and marginal spaces of a heterogenous metropolis.
Winner: Brian Hartman, B.Arch ‘24
Title: Procession and Materiality: Extension of the City through a Curation of Experience
Award: $6,000
Jury Comment: Brian Hartman presented an exciting proposition to deeply investigate housing and neighborhoods in different regions of Spain. Brian's proposal resonated with the jury in the depth of inquiry, associated residencies and architecture studio visits and his engagement with one of our visiting lecturers, Debra Mesa, Ensemble Studio as a participating advisor to his travel proposal; as well as a post travel production proposal to exhibit his summer research.
Winner: Kit Tang, B.Arch ‘24
Title: Constituency Materiality Memory
Award: $6,000
Jury Comment: Kit Tang's travel proposal into the constituencies and typology of Spain provided a provocative inquiry into the layers of cultural mixing in a complex region. His travel itinerary coupled with portfolio pieces demonstrated a sustained interest in culture and materiality.
Winner: Colin Walters, B.Arch ‘24
Title: Material Convergence: Library at Upham’s Corner
Award: $6,000
Jury Comment: Colin Walters proposed a summer travel program investigating the adaptive reuse of post-industrial cities in England and France to couple with his future Thesis interests and application to the Pittsburgh industrial landscape. The jury found Colin's proposal thoughtful in his choice of applicable sites of inquiry and a range of scales to investigate the questions of post-industrial reuse.
RESEARCH AWARDS
Ferguson Jacobs Prize in Architecture
Faculty Award
This award was established to promote continuity of the classical tradition in contemporary architectural practice. It encourages design excellence based on long-standing design principles that promote beauty and harmony in the built environment.
Fall 2022 Jury: Kai Gutschow (Chair), Omar Khan, Diane Shaw
Winners: Sarosh Anklesaria & Vicki Achnani
Proposal: Classical Monoliths: Formal and Ecological Translations in South Asian Architecture
Award: $6,500
Jury Comment: The jury was impressed about their expanding ideas about the classical tradition in South Asia. The project focuses on various types of monolith temples, including examples that are both above and below the ground, and looks at them through a series of classes as well as research analysis, and eventually exhibitions and publications. The project looks at a series of registers: a formal register looking at organization and ornament, and for contemporary practice, the ecological register looking at ideas about extraction and construction materials.
Isabel Sophia Liceaga Discretionary Fund
Faculty Award
This award was established to support faculty-led projects that critically engage students and advance the mission and reputation of the school.
Fall 2022 Jury: Mary-Lou Arscott (Chair), Josh Bard, Kai Gutschow, Erica Cochran Hameen, Omar Khan
Winner: Tommy CheeMou Yang
Proposal: Compoundologies: Urban Playbook for Radical Typo-Morphological Transformations
Award: $3,000
Jury Comment: This is a long running research project in Thailand which is attempting to intervene in an engaged and delicate way with conflicted cultural conditions. The project builds on the school's focus on reinventing pedagogy and experimenting with architectural representational techniques, and seeks to share with the community through an eventual exhibition.