Since 1981, the SOM Foundation has supported the work of more than 375 emerging architects, landscape architects, interior architects, urban designers, and engineers. Below are the most recent recipients of the SOM Foundation's awards. A comprehensive list of all past fellows can be found here.
Corridors as Urban Infrastructure: Reorganizing Density in High-Density Communities
This research explores how corridor systems can function as spatial organizational mechanisms in high-density aging communities, restructuring accessibility and public space. Through cross-city fieldwork and comparative analysis, the study aims to summarize the operational modes of corridor systems in different contexts and their potential roles in urban regeneration.
Fan Guo
Hunan University
School of Architecture and Planning
Sixth Street Viaduct as Next Generation Infrastructure
This research project utilizes a combination of data-based analysis and empirical, qualitative explorations, intentionally combining quantitative information with lived experience. The outcomes will be a set of thick mappings, multi-dimensional and humanistic, that assess LA’s Sixth Street Viaduct as a mobility conduit, public space, and prototype for next generation infrastructure.
Linda C. Samuels
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Washington University in St. Louis
Critical Connectors: Regenerating Structures and Community Through Short-span Bridges
During her fellowship, Lili Boenigk will document understudied bridge-building practices, emphasizing the role of collective participation and culture in infrastructure siting, design, and maintenance.
Lili Boenigk
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Building Technology
Visioning Eco-Connectivity with Youth in the Rio Grande Valley
“Visioning Eco-Connectivity with Youth in the Rio Grande Valley” will at once make scholarly contributions and provide needed actionable insights to decision-makers while also modeling a method of community-led planning and design that prioritizes the needs of a group negatively impacted by a car-centric transit system: youth.
Maggie Hansen
University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
Miriam Solis
University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
Through the Cloud: Remapping Mobility in the Technical Landscapes of Northern Virginia
By examining the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, a critical infrastructural corridor and converted rail line in Northern Virginia, this project asks: how can design reassess the potential of secondary mobility corridors at the edge of major urban areas as alternatives to car-centric networks?
Ali Fard
University of Virginia
School of Architecture
Disrupting the Corridor: Water/Ground Mobilities Across the Adriatic
Focusing on the Adriatic region between Albania and Italy, “Disrupting the Corridor: Water/Ground Mobilities Across the Adriatic” explores how mobility infrastructures, such as the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and thermoelectric power complexes, mediate flows of water, energy, nature, capital, ideas, space, and politics.
Simonetta Armondi
Politecnico di Milano
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
Agim Kërçuku
Politecnico di Milano
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
Pennsylvania State University College of Arts and Architecture
Texas Tech University Huckabee College of Architecture
University of Southern California School of Architecture
