Design School’s Mazereeuw receives Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced that Miho Mazereeuw M.Arch./M.L.A. ’02 will receive the Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship in Architecture to study post-disaster urban architecture in three cities along the Ring of Fire, a zone of the most frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Established in 1935 in memory of Arthur W. Wheelwright of the Class of 1887, the $60,000 fellowship for travel and study in architecture outside the United States is awarded annually to a GSD alumnus or alumna who holds the degree of master in architecture or master of architecture in urban design. The award was presented at GSD on April 21. A lecture by Mazereeuw on her forthcoming project followed the award presentation.

Focusing on Kobe, Japan; Banda Aceh, Indonesia; and Chimbote, Peru — cities that are located near epicenters of the largest and most dangerous earthquakes in the 20th century — this project will form the basis of a comparison between patterns of urbanization, architectural redevelopment, and the local reconstruction efforts toward answering a critical question: How can architecture bridge the gap between the long-range outlook of formal planning measures by state governments and the short-range reconstruction efforts of local communities as a strategy to mitigate life-threatening damage of natural disasters?

With over half the world’s population living in coastal areas by 2010, there has never been a more important time to reconsider the role of architects in the wake of imminent dangers of seismic activity and coastal urbanization around the world.

Mazereeuw has been an associate at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, Netherlands, since 2004. She has also served as project architect for Chinatown House of Toronto and was a studio critic at the University of Toronto. She received both her master of architecture (with letter of commendation from the chairman) and her master of landscape architecture with distinction from GSD. Mazereeuw received her bachelor of arts degree with high honors from Wesleyan University.