Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced four shortlisted architects for the 2022 Wheelwright Prize. Now in its 10th cycle, the Wheelwright Prize supports innovative design research, crossing both cultural and architectural boundaries, with a $100,000 grant intended to support two years of study. Previous winners have presented diverse research proposals, including studies of kitchen typologies around the world; the architecture and culture of greenhouses; the potential of seaweed, shellfish, and the intertidal zone to advance architectural knowledge and material futures; and how spaces have been transformed through the material contributions of the African Diaspora.
The 2022 Wheelwright Prize drew a wide international pool of applicants. A first-phase jury deliberation was conducted in April; a winner will be announced in June.
Jurors for the 2022 prize include: Will Hunter, 2022 Harvard GSD Loeb Fellow and founder and chief executive of London School of Architecture; Adrian Lahoud, dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art; Mark Lee, chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard GSD; Irene Sunwoo, John H. Bryan Chair and Curator, Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago; Shirley Surya, curator of design and architecture at M+; and Sarah M. Whiting, dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard GSD.
The four finalists for the 2022 Wheelwright Prize, and their proposals, are:
Curry J. Hackett is a lecturer and adjunct assistant professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and core organizer of the anti-racist design justice school, Dark Matter University. His practice, Wayside Studio, primarily based in Washington, DC, collaborates with communities and organizations to engage in matters pertaining to culture, infrastructure, ecology, and the public realm.
Summer Islam is an ARB registered architect, researcher, and activist who works at the intersection of architectural design, engineering, systems thinking, digital technologies, and material science. She is a founding director of Material Cultures, a nonprofit organization that brings together design, research, and action toward a post-carbon built environment.
Marina Otero is head of the social design masters at Design Academy Eindhoven. The program focuses on roles for designers attuned to contemporary ecological and social challenges. From 2015 to 2022, she was the director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI), the Dutch Institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.
Feifei Zhou is a Chinese-born artist and architect who works between China and London. She holds a BArch from the University of Sheffield, UK (2014) and an MArch from Royal College of Art in London (2018). Her work explores spatial, cultural, and ecological impacts of the industrialized built environment.
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