SOM Foundation Announces Jury for the 2024 European Research Prize

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich is a Spanish licensed architect, urban designer, and landscape designer trained in Spain and Switzerland. Until 2023, she taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was 2017 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow. Previously, she held appointments at the University of Virginia in the US and Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and International University of Catalonia (UIC) in Spain. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design at Washington University in St. Louis. Bonvehi Rosich is the recipient of the 2019 SOM Foundation Research Prize.

Iker Gil (Chair) has been the executive director of the SOM Foundation since 2019. He is the founding partner of MAS Studio and founder of the nonprofit MAS Context. Gil has edited or coedited several books, including Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio and Shanghai Transforming. He has curated multiple exhibitions, including Nocturnal Landscapes, Poured Architecture: Sergio Prego on Miguel Fisac, and BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. He was cocurator of Exhibit Columbus 2020–2021 and associate curator of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. He was the 2024 Victor A. Morgenstern Family Visiting Chair in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) along with architect Michel Rojkind. He has also previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and the Escola da Cidade (São Paulo). Gil has been selected as one of “Fifty Under Fifty: Innovators of the 21st Century” by a jury composed by Stanley Tigerman, Jeanne Gang, Qingyun Ma, and Marion Weiss, named New Progressive by Architect Magazine, and included in the Hall of Fame in Newcity’s annual Design 50.

Margarita Jover is Professor in Architecture and Program Co-Director of Landscape + Engineering at Tulane University in New Orleans. She received a Master of Architecture degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 1995. Together with Iñaki Alday, she founded the internationally awarded firm aldayjover architecture and landscape in 1996 in Barcelona, Spain. The multidisciplinary, research-based practice focuses on innovation and is particularly renowned for its leadership in a new approach to the relation between cities and rivers, in which the natural dynamics of flooding become part of the public space. She has taught at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the University of Navarra, the University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia, and the University of Virginia. At the University of Virginia, she was Research Faculty (2012–15), first Professor of Practice of the School of Architecture (2015–17), and tenured Associate Professor (2017–18). Jover is co-author of the book Ecologies of Prosperity (ORO Editors, 2018) and The Water Park (ACTAR, 2008). Both in academic research and in practice, Jover promotes a broader understanding of architecture that aims to mitigate and reverse socioecological crises. Her academic research line discusses the reform of the current model of progress by promoting a specific socioecological urbanism.

Henk Ovink is the Executive Director and founding Commissioner for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. He was the first ever global water ambassador, appointed in 2015 by the Dutch Cabinet as Special Envoy for International Water Affairs. In this capacity, he led the second UN Water Conference in 2023, the first since 1977. Henk served on President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force where he led the long-term innovation, resilience, and rebuilding efforts and developed and led the groundbreaking “Rebuild by Design” competition. Before joining the Task Force, Ovink was both Acting Director General of Spatial Planning and Water Affairs and Director National Spatial Planning for the Netherlands after multiple roles in the private sector and academia. Henk holds an honorary doctorate at Delft University. In 2023, Henk Ovink was the 10th recipient of the Foreign Affairs Decoration of Honor in Gold for his unique and outstanding water diplomacy work and global leadership.

Jane Withers is a leading independent design curator, writer, consultant, and the Director of Jane Withers Studio. The research-based practice has a particular interest in raising awareness of environmental issues and inspiring change through design, and has curated exhibitions and public programs with museums and institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Academy of Art, and the Design Museum. Over the past two decades, the studio has pioneered an interdisciplinary approach to addressing the water crisis through curated exhibitions, research programs, public programming, and teaching with an overarching ambition to foster a holistic perspective on water that encompasses different cultures, voices, eras and belief systems and helps frame a new understanding of water in the twenty-first century. The latest exhibition, Water Pressure: Designing for the Future, opened at MK&G Hamburg and will travel to the Museum fur Gestaltung and MAK Vienna in 2024–25. Withers teaches and speaks internationally, has served on numerous juries and advisory boards, and published widely. She has been a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, Design Academy Eindhoven, and ECAL. She was awarded an honorary fellowship by the University of Westminster for services to the environment and received Milan’s Design Prize for Experimentation.