Jose Ahedo wins Wheelwright Prize

Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), announced on Tuesday that Barcelona architect Jose M. Ahedo is the winner of the 2014 Wheelwright Prize, a $100,000 traveling fellowship aimed at fostering investigative approaches to contemporary design.

Born in Vizcaya, Spain, in 1980, Ahedo received his BArch in 2005 from the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de la Universitat de Catalunya (ESARQ-UIC) in Barcelona, and an MArch II from Harvard University GSD in 2010.

The Wheelwright Prize is now in its second year as an open international competition for early-career architects. This year, the prize received nearly 200 applications from 46 countries.

The jury praised Ahedo’s proposal, Domesticated Grounds: Design and Domesticity Within Animal Farming Systems, for its integrated approach to a broad range of issues, and for his clarity in identifying architecture and design’s potential to shape more sustainable models of production for a global mega-industry. He proposes to travel to Taranaki, New Zealand; Ikhbulag and Orhkon Valleys, Mongolia; Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; Hainan, China; and various centers and companies around the world producing agricultural research. The $100,000 grant will fund Ahedo’s research over the next two years.