Since 1981, the SOM Foundation has supported the work of more than 325 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.
Air Purification and Urban Strategies
Architecture has always been an ecological, political, and social practice. With air pollution seriously affecting our existence, Xianglan He will visit Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden to explore how air pollution can be addressed through architecture.
Xianglan He
Hebei University
School of Architecture and Art Design
Air Justice: A Study on the Relationship Between Urban Form, Social Class, and Air Quality
Bolun Qiu will travel to Chongqing, Tokyo, and Copenhagen to study the relationship between urban form, social class, and air quality to explore how air, a natural resource with public attributes, can be distributed equally and justly to citizens.
Bolun Qiu
Chongqing University
School of Architecture and Urban Planning
Environmental Tectonics Through Air: Learning from Vernacular
Based on the nature of air (convection, radiation, humidity, and conduction), Shuaibo Shi will explore the “space-climate” mechanism of Jiangxi vernacular courtyard building.
Shuaibo Shi
Southeast University
School of Architecture
Lydia Moog proposes to investigate different interpretations of “airiness” in structures. She will evaluate the notion of what it means for a structure to be lightweight, materially efficient, and sustainable by exploring a range of environments from rural to urban as well as current innovations and past methods through a set of case studies.
Lydia Moog
University of California, Berkeley
Land Narratives—Fantastic Futures
The 2023 Special Recognition for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design supports Toni L. Griffin’s Land Narratives—Fantastic Futures project as part of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Laboratory of the Future.
“Collective Comfort” aims to develop a public program that rethinks the cooling center as an educational resilience hub. Furthermore, “Collective Comfort” aims to bring education on heat risk and weatherization efforts to the forefront, helping to destabilize the fossil-fuel reliant single-family home by providing alternative visions that foreground collectivity and community resilience in desert cities.
Liz Gálvez
University of California, Berkeley
College of Environmental Design
Dalia Munenzon
University of Houston
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design
Taking Back the Air: Collective Learning, Advocacy, and Design for a Healthy Environment
“Taking Back the Air” 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.
Nida Rehman
Carnegie Mellon University
School of Architecture
Air de jeux: Protecting Children from Air Pollution by Designing Urban Environmental Installations
“Air de jeux” will form a partnership between the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), academics from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the NGO Les Chercheurs d’air, the BuildWind enterprise, and municipal representatives to propose urban environmental installations to mitigate outdoor air pollutant exposure for children.
Maider Llaguno-Munitxa
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Chiara Cavalieri
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Beatrice Lampariello
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Damien Claeys
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Gérald Ledent
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Christine Fontaine
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Geoffrey Van Moeseke
Université catholique de Louvain
Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, and Urban Planning
Howard University Department of Architecture
California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo Department of Architecture
Iowa State University Department of Architecture
