Carnegie Mellon Architecture is proud to announce the student and faculty recipients of the Fall 2023 Architecture Awards. Our fall awards provide over $60,000 in funding to support travel, projects, internships and research for undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty. Visit the Awards page for more information about the awards.
During the ceremony, we also recognized the recipient of the Andrew Carnegie Society (ACS) Scholars Program, Shray Tripathi, B.Arch ‘24, and the 2023 AIA Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Student Award, Rachel Ruscigno, M.Arch ‘24.
Thanks to all who applied, our juries for their efforts in selecting this year’s recipients, and to our donors for their generous support. Learn more about this fall’s recipients below.
2023 Awards Committee: Meredith Marsh (Chair), Joshua Bard, Christi Danner, Omar Khan
PROJECT/INTERNSHIP SUPPORT
Burdett Assistantship
B.Arch & M.Arch Student Award
This award is open to all Carnegie Mellon Architecture students pursuing their first professional degree in architecture and is intended to support projects and activities that will enhance the winning student’s future work.
Fall 2023 Jury: Matthew Huber (Chair), Vicki Achnani, Nina Baird, Jongwan Kwon
Awardee: Graana Khan, B.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Architectural Non-Form Manifestations: How Pashtun Women Experience Their World Orally
Award: $4,000
Jury Comment: This project is unique and inspiring in its incorporation of ethnographic research, using the funds to support outreach often impossible in the isolated world of the academy, and exemplifying Bob Burdett's legacy of championing respect for others.
Awardee: Ella Moon, B.Arch ‘26
Proposal: Cells to Structures: Applications of Biomimetic Design in Adaptable Structures
Award: $4,000
Jury Comment: Remarkable for its thoroughness and rigor, this proposal offers a clearly defined research trajectory with a carefulness that befits the Assistantship's devotion to patience. It is an exciting synergy of process, theory and technology.
Awardee: Meghan Pisarcik, M.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Fabricated Light Structure
Award: $4,000
Jury Comment: This proposal extends the applicant's persistent, academic career-spanning explorations in the craft, tectonics and form-making potentials of glass sculpture. More than any other proposal, it demonstrates the Assistantship's call for love of subject, an obvious devotion to making.
Alwin Cassens, Jr. Memorial Fund in Architecture
Student Award
This award provides financial support to Carnegie Mellon Architecture students to attend conferences or other events in support of their academic pursuits in the area of public interest design.
Fall 2023 Jury: Matthew Huber (Chair), Vicki Achnani, Nina Baird, Jongwan Kwon
Awardee: Valeria Duque Villegas, MUD ‘25
Proposal: Model. Barcelona Architectures Festival
Award: $2,200
Jury Comment: In service to the award's mission of pursuing public interest design, Valeria's proposal seeks to explore issues of cultural identity in Latin American architecture and urbanism through a decolonizing lens, seeking to equip herself at a conference in Barcelona, focused on radical empathy. Perhap also, the unique history of Catalonian identity in the Spanish colonial context will serve as further fodder for her work.
Awardee: Priyanka Thakur, M.Arch ‘24
Proposal: Bouw met Bamboa! Rotterdam
Award: $2,200
Jury Comment: Priyanka's proposal looks to strengthen her already robust knowledge around and network of contacts in bamboo construction. Already an emerging expert voice, Priyanka sees bamboo as an alternative to conventional construction that is sustainable and resilient and that offers skill building opportunities in the public interest.
Measuring & Monitoring Services, Inc. Internship Fund
Undergraduate Student Award
This award provides financial support to undergraduate students who wish to undertake a summer internship or related program under the guidance of established professionals during the summer preceding their final year of undergraduate study.
Fall 2023 Jury: Matthew Huber (Chair), Vicki Achnani, Nina Baird, Jongwan Kwon
Awardee: Jeffrey Li, B.Arch ‘25
Internship: Internship at Arup
Award: $3,200
Jury Comment: Jeffrey's application demonstrated an opportunity at Arup to engage in learning from a rigorous environment and a culture of problem solving that spans a variety of the grand challenges like those that motivate our pedagogy, and to do it at one of the world's premier engineering firms.
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 2023 Jury: Joshua Lee (Chair), Doug Cooper, Jackie McFarland, Francesca Torello
Awardee: David Vargas, B.Arch '26
Proposal: Canal Cities of the Netherlands and Belgium
Award: $10,000
Jury Comment: The jury appreciated the project's potential for detailed documentation of locations that have dealt with the existential threat of sea level rise for many generations. David’s personal connection to this issue and extraordinary portfolio of hand drawings led to their selection.
Luther S. Lashmit and Louis F. Valentour Traveling Scholarships
B.Arch Student Awards
These awards support international travel and research under the guidance of a faculty advisor for students with one or more years remaining in their degree program.
Fall 2023 Jury: Joshua Lee (Chair), Doug Cooper, Jackie McFarland, Francesca Torello
Awardee: Henry Von Rintelen, B.Arch ‘25
Title: Latin America: Fusion as an Act of Survival
Award: $6,500
Jury Comment: The jury found Henry’s recognition of the ideological contradictions between the original intentions and contemporary usage of many projects throughout Mexico, Brazil and Peru an intriguing proposition and the detailed itinerary with specific cases convincing.
Awardee: Nathan Cottrell, B.Arch ‘27
Title: Exploring Chiang Mai, Thailand’s Vernacular Lanna Compound Homes
Award: $6,500
Jury Comment: Through a series of drawings and documentaries, the project will share the embedded wisdom and evolution of communal homes in response to the city’s destructive top-down planning.
Awardee: Morgan Newman, PhD-Arch
Title: Spatial Research Methods at Forensic Architecture (FA) and Goldsmiths University
Award: $6,500
Jury Comment: The award will support Morgan’s doctoral dissertation proposal advised by Nida Rehman to map environmental sacrifice zones in Alabama’s Black Belt region to identify racialized spatial patterns.
RESEARCH AWARDS
Ferguson Jacobs Prize in Architecture
Student Award
This award was established to promote the continuity of traditional architecture and building techniques in contemporary architectural practice. The prize supports projects, travel experiences or individual apprenticeships and internships that explore traditional architecture and building techniques as vital knowledge to an architect’s education, practice and scholarship.
Fall 2023 Jury: Joshua Lee (Chair), Doug Cooper, Jackie McFarland, Francesca Torello
Awardee: Natalie Waldram, B.Arch ’23 (fall)
Proposal: Rituals of Reconstruction, Maintenance and Repair of Traditional Japanese Wooden Architecture
Award: $6,500
Jury Comment: The jury found Natalie’s interest in both traditional and contemporary practices of care and the list of projects throughout Japan and Korea compelling. We look forward to reviewing their proposed book of architectural drawings, collaged photography and experiential narratives.
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 2023 Jury: Jonathan Kline (Chair), Juney Lee, Steve Lee, Sarah Rafson
Awardee: Vicki Achnani
Proposal: Bending Active Systems_ Bamboo Research Pavilion: Prototyping material and spanning system in Bamboo_ using robotic arms and steam-bending
Award: $3,000
Jury Comment: The jury felt that Vicki's proposal had a great potential for critical student engagement because the grant is aimed at directly supporting a pair of design build materials exploration seminars. The proposal supports the mission of the school and will help Vicki advance his career.