Examine the Existing. This collage is a composition of photos of existing campus buildings, reorganized into a dense and repetitive field. It reflects my initial attraction to institutional spaces, their order, repetition, and density, and the way they bring people together. The rigid alignment reflects the structure of institutional space, while subtle misalignments and overlaps introduce moments of chaos, introducing a sense of human presence how community connects the structured environments. © Nekelle Thomas.
The SOM Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Robert L. Wesley Award. Three fellows, Jenae Edwards (University of Southern California, School of Architecture), Israel Jimenez (Texas Tech University, Huckabee College of Architecture), and Nekelle Thomas (Pennsylvania State University, College of Arts and Architecture) will each receive a $10,000 award in addition to a yearlong mentorship program that connects the students with leading BIPOC practitioners and educators. Awardees will also be supported by Black Spectacles as they work toward becoming licensed architects.
“We are looking forward to working with Jenae, Israel, and Nekelle this year by providing economic support and through the mentorship program. With the recent passing of Robert L. Wesley, we can’t think of a better way to honor his career and legacy than by continuing to support the next generation of students during their college education,” said Iker Gil, SOM Foundation Executive Director and Robert L. Wesley Award mentor.
In “Siren City,” the future of urbanism is defined by “Super Infrastructure.” Circular walls rise from the ocean floor to the water’s surface, parting the sea to create newly exposed ground for urban development. This system not only establishes buildable land but also generates opportunities to harvest energy and fresh water through desalination, utilizing the waterfalls that cascade along the city walls. © Jenae Edwards.
The “Joshua Diamond” is designed as a reproducible facade system for architectural spaces in the Joshua Tree Desert, emphasizing minimally invasive construction. Its adaptive form and material strategy respond to and help mitigate human-induced environmental conditions within the desert landscape. © Jenae Edwards.
Jenae Edwards is a fourth-year Bachelor of Architecture student at the University of Southern California. She serves as the co-president of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) chapter at USC. Born in the Bahamas and raised in the Caribbean, she has witnessed how architecture shapes cultural identity, vulnerability, and community life in small island contexts. Edwards is a recipient of a USC 2025 Architecture Research Travel Fellowship and conducted fieldwork in Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and Fiji, where she gained insight into how architecture can adapt to environmental change while protecting and evolving cultural systems. Her work is deeply motivated by the realities of rising sea levels and shifting climate conditions, particularly their impact on island nations and coastal cultures. Edwards is also passionate about expanding access to architectural discourse, using video and podcast platforms to share insights on architecture, research, and the student experience with a broader audience. Her other interests include fashion and visual arts, where she blends her love of dinosaurs with her passion for design.
Israel Jimenez is an architecture student whose work is grounded in questions of spatial justice, community identity, and the social responsibility of the built environment. Raised in the US-Mexico borderland, Jimenez’s interest in architecture emerged through lived experiences navigating unsafe, underdeveloped spaces and housing instability. These formative moments shaped his understanding of space not only as a physical construct but as a notion that can either reinforce or challenge social inequities. Jimenez began his architectural education at El Paso Community College, where he was actively involved in the Architecture Society, connecting with practitioners engaged in community-centered design. He later continued his studies at Texas Tech University, Huckabee College of Architecture in El Paso, where his work became increasingly informed by the cross-border infrastructure, civic space, and user-centered design approaches. His research and studio projects explore how form, infrastructure, and public space can foster dignity, safety, and collective identity. Alongside his academic work, Jimenez has contributed to research initiatives such as POST (Project for Operative Spatial Technologies), directed by professors and architects Stephen Mueller and Ersela Kripa, exploring borderland spatial and environmental issues as well as systematic solutions that apply to further extents in architecture.
Nekelle Thomas is a current fourth-year architecture student at Pennsylvania State University pursuing a bachelors in Architecture. Raised in the United States with family roots in Antigua, she was first exposed to construction and building practices on the island. These early experiences shaped an understanding of the work required to create functional spaces that foster community. Long before studying architecture, Thomas was already building, drawing inspiration from projects found online, sketching building ideas, and creating spaces using cardboard and other materials found around their home. Creating has always been a grounding practice, even before it was consciously understood as such. In high school, Thomas was formally introduced to architecture through a technical and structural lens, learning how ideas translate into buildable reality. In college, she rediscovered architecture through the lens of spatial, communal, and experiential design. Over time, their understanding of architecture evolved from a purely technical discipline into a medium for storytelling, preserving memory, and shaping collective experience. By combining three stages of architectural experience: hands-on making, technical design, and narrative-driven design, Thomas is particularly interested in community-led planning that prioritizes meaningful, functional, and healing spaces.
“Folded Solutions.” There is a strong presence of membrane underdevelopment on the Mexican-American border. Juarez suffers from poor and permeable wall sections, each type exposing residents to harmful dust particles. Notable underdevelopment in insulation also poses great discomfort. However, the dust “leakage” levels vary in pressure and orientation. They contain microscopic solids that may enter and alter different systems within the human body, such as the lungs and bloodstream. The proposed membrane aims to offer a solution of redirection through the use of surfaces and their adaptations to contextual opportunities and conditions, particularly in the form of folds. Large quantities of dust at distinct pressures are to be redirected throughout the membrane to focused spaces that evaluate the dust and give it purpose. In other words, there would be folds that not only shape the space within, but also encourage a relationship with the exterior conditions it was once exposed to. © Israel Jimenez.
“Braced Communal Platform.” The site is situated within a dynamic context that holds the potential to alter and be altered by the city’s transit infrastructure. The primary users are international students who commute daily by bus. Few to no spaces are dedicated to providing these students with workable environments and interaction opportunities. The building features a series of curvilinear sections reinforced by a cross-bracing “diagrid-like” system, which induces focal points and grids that dictate collaborative spaces and connect the user with their environment. Variables such as density split the program and promote wayfinding. Furthermore, it places wind and daylight as tools rather than an afterthought. © Israel Jimenez.
This year’s jury was chaired by Robert L. Wesley (Retired Partner, SOM, Chicago) and included Teri Canada (Principal and Cofounder, EVOKE Studio, Durham), Lisa C. Henry (Associate Professor and Associate Dean, College of Architecture + Planning, University of Utah, Salt Lake City), Camille Martin-Thomsen (Dean of Faculty and Vice President of Academic Affairs and professor of architecture and interior architecture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago), and Amber N. Wiley (Wick Cary Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, University of Oklahoma, Norman).