Schoonschip. Floating sustainable housing collective in Amsterdam, Netherlands. © Isabel Nabuurs.
The SOM Foundation is pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 Structural Engineering Fellowship. Elizabeth Claypool will receive $20,000 to conduct original research. This year’s topic, “Adapting Housing Strategies to Respond to New Realities,” seeks to explore affordable, equitable, and innovative modes of multifamily housing that respond to current and future needs. With her proposal, “Exploring Innovative Housing: A Playbook for Optimism” Claypool aims to create a playbook for optimism: a survey of nineteen case studies to identify innovative solutions that create meaningful impacts on housing outcomes.
Elizabeth Claypool grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With an innate passion for architecture informed by a childhood in earthquake-prone Southern California, Claypool was always curious about ways beautiful structures could exist in the face of challenging conditions. To pursue these interests, Claypool completed her B.S. in Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where she received a hands-on education in architecture and a theoretical knowledge of seismic design. During her studies, she constructed and tested full-scale timber shear walls to investigate a novel lateral system for her senior project but also learned how to cast plaster in her architecture studio. More recently, she completed an M.S. in Structural Engineering at Stanford University where her coursework focused on seismic hazards, risk analysis, and entrepreneurship. Outside of studies, Claypool is an enthusiastic climber, swimmer, avid reader, and barista. She looks forward to using this fellowship to investigate the multi-dimensional and very human challenges of modern housing demands.
“Receiving this fellowship means that I have the support and encouragement to investigate housing innovations with an authenticity and depth I could not achieve on my own. Homes are some of the most important and intimate structures that exist, so I am thrilled to have the space to study such a meaningful part of our field,” said Claypool. “I am incredibly grateful to the selection committee and SOM Foundation for offering me such a unique and enriching opportunity.”
This year’s jury was chaired by Alessandro Beghini (Structural Engineering Senior Associate Principal at SOM, San Francisco) and included Sarah L. Billington (Chair and UPS Foundation Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA), Paul Fast (Founding partner of Fast + Epp, Vancouver), and Matt Field (Co-Chief Executive Officer of TMG Partners, San Francisco).
“Elizabeth Claypool’s proposal looks holistically at the issue of affordable housing around the world. She is approaching the problem from various perspectives: from sustainability to resiliency to equity,” said Alessandro Beghini. “Her research will help improve the understanding of the complex relationship between innovation in housing and local materials and technologies.”