SOM Foundation Announces Jury and Applications Open for the 2026 Robert L. Wesley Award

Germane Barnes is an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture, where he directs the Community Housing Identity Lab, and the director of the design practice Studio Barnes. His research and design work examines the connection between architecture and identity, with a focus on Black domesticity. He grew up in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University. In 2021 he received the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Wheelwright Prize and the Architectural League Prize. He has also received the Rome Prize in Architecture and a United States Artists Fellowship, and he served as designer-in-residence for the Opa-locka Community Development Corporation. His work has been published and exhibited by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Graham Foundation, and two chairs he designed are in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Teri Canada is principal and cofounder of EVOKE Studio in Durham, North Carolina. For more than twenty-eight years she has guided projects from pre-design through construction administration, building a design process for each client and pairing it with community engagement. After graduating from North Carolina State University, she became one of the first five African American women to become a Registered Architect in the state. She joined the Freelon Group in 2007 and advanced to senior associate, serving as lead project manager on the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and Emancipation Park. She was later selected for Perkins+Will’s Leadership Institute and appointed to the firm’s Diversity Council. In 2015, she spoke as a seminar panelist at the National Organization of Minority Architects conference on her experience as a minority architect.

Shawn Rickenbacker is an architect, urbanist, and urban data researcher. He is an associate professor at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York and has directed the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures since 2018. His recent research, under the title Design Reparations, looks at how policy reform and design can address urban morphologies in Harlem and the economics of affordable housing. Rickenbacker holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia, and he completed a certificate in Advanced Digital Interaction Design at New York University. He cofounded Urban Data + Design, which focuses on how data can inform decision making, and was a partner in Rickenbacker + Leung. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, Ohio State University, and the University of Virginia.

Douglas Voigt, AIA, AICP, is the urban design and planning partner at SOM, where he leads the firm’s global urban design and planning studio from Chicago. He joined SOM in 1995 and has led complex urban plans and architectural projects for public and private clients, from the Detroit East Riverfront Framework Plan to the Wild Mile in Chicago. His work draws on transit-oriented development experience in Chicago and abroad, and he is interested in how design builds community and connects people to one another. Voigt is a member of the Executive Committee of the Chicago Central Area Committee, a board member of Openlands, and secretary of the SOM Foundation.

Peter MacKeith is executive director of the SOM Foundation since 2026, coming as a nationally recognized design educator, administrator, curator, and author. Most recently, he served as Dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas from 2014 until earlier this year. In this role he helped to expand student outcomes, research funding, and facilities, notably guiding the design and construction of the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, designed by Pritzker Prize recipients Grafton Architects and Modus Studio. In 2025, MacKeith served as the Lead Commissioner for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, celebrating contemporary American design under the theme of PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity in collaboration with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and independent consultancy DesignConnects.