GSD Alumni and Friends
Carlos Arnaiz, MArch '03, wins 2008 Wheelwright Fellowship.
Carlos Arnaiz, MArch '03, received The Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship in Architecture to support his research project, Four Experiments in Urbanism: The Modern University City in Latin America. Monica Ponce de Leon, MAUD '91, Professor of Architecture, presented the award to Arnaiz on April 12 during Alumni Weekend at the GSD. Following the award presentation, Arnaiz addressed alumni and others in the GSD community about his forthcoming project.
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 a Master in Architecture or Master of Architecture in Urban Design degree.
“The modern Latin American university campus presents the opportunity to articulate an alternative vision for architecture and urbanism,” said Arnaiz. “Established and built at a peculiar historical moment, when professional confidence merged with a progressive view of nation-building, the modernist campus in Latin America re-imagined the university as a laboratory for urbanism where architecture could function as an imperfect but affecting utopia. The designers of these campuses channeled an extraordinary optimism regarding the power of form to create a space separate from the colonial city that surrounded them. Their capacity to break with history by tapping into the ideological subterfuge of modernism enabled these architects to reconfigure practices for local spaces such as the city square and combine them with radically new ideas regarding movement, nature, and representation. The architecture of the modern Latin American campus produced an unprecedented repository of design strategies that has not been properly studied.”
As part of the Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, Arnaiz will formulate a blueprint that re-thinks the modern Latin American university campus as a radical experiment in architecture and urbanism. He will study four campuses that were created between 1930 and 1955 and whose architectural legacies present the strongest evidence of a clear ideological position regarding architecture in the city. The four campuses are the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México in México City, México; the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela; the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Bogotá in Bogotá, Colombia; and the Cidade Universitaria in São Paolo, Brazil.